Classroom digital signage driving touchscreen demand
While the rise of smartphones such as Apple’s iPhone may be the most obvious reason for growth in the touchscreen market, digital signage – particularly in educational and conference environments – is also leading to soaring demand for touch-sensitive displays, according to researcher iSuppli.
Globally, shipments of touchscreen modules will more than quintuple from just under 1m last year to 5.4m units in 2013, it predicts.
Most touchscreens in digital signage are used in education and conference-room applications, according to iSuppli, with those two categories accounting for around 86 percent of shipments. Other indoor applications such as way-finding and retail make up most of the remainder.
“Touchscreens have great appeal for use in front-projection interactive whiteboards in the education and conference-room markets,” said iSuppli analyst Sanju Khatri.
“At the same time, adding touch capability to digital signage opens up another dimension to screens and helps provide relevant information to a customer.”
Resistive technology is currently the most popular for digital-signage touchscreens, accounting for 42 percent of shipments in 2009 – most of them for education and conference-room installations. It is also the cheapest to implement, says iSuppli.
But by 2013 optical touchscreens using cameras to detect user movement will be on the rise, accounting for around 26 percent of the market, the researcher predicts. “Optical imaging touchscreen technology is suitable for conference rooms because this technology offers cost-effective scaling to large sizes,” according to iSuppli.
However, the firm acknowledges that no one technology will dominate, with all having different strengths.
www.isuppli.com
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