Every once in a while Microsoft does the display industry a favor. I’m not talking about the Old Testament here: about how the (mostly) Microsoft-Intel PC platform created a huge mass market for CRT monitors, followed by notebook PCs - the critical application that initiated the modern large-LCD industry.

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor

I’m not even thinking of the relatively recent past, in which Windows 98, XP and Vista supported multiple monitors, thus enlarging the display market (at least to some extent).

No, I’m thinking of now, when support of multi-touch touch screens in Windows 7 is galvanizing the touch-panel industry. At SID last month there were no less than 22 touch-screen developers, and many of them were overtly discussing the importance of Windows 7 support.

At Display Taiwan the following week, the major Taiwan panel makers were all featuring touch panels prominently in their displays. AUO’s B.D. Liu identified touch systems as one of AUO’s three major themes at the show. CPT was even more specific, naming "multi-touch for Windows 7" as one of four "megatrends."

Earlier this week Digitimes reported that touch-panel makers believe netbooks will lead the charge in adopting touch panels in Windows 7 systems, in advance of larger notebooks and monitors. Multitouch netbook models are now being developed, sampled and validated, so the panel makers are pretty sure of their ground.

Prices of projected capacitive touch panels are running from $2.50 to $3.00 per inch, so touch-panel modules for mainstream Netbooks (less than 12 inches) will cost $30 or less. But why put a premium display in a fiercely price-competitive product? It turns out that touch panels can replace trackpads on netbooks, giving system designers more room to address the always challenging issue of keyboard size. Apart from that, a multi-touch interface has already proved its appeal on smart phones and should be able to command a premium on netbooks.

Clearly, projected capacitance touch panels can get expensive for larger screen sizes. A proven approach for larger sizes is an optical "touch" screen in which cameras in two corners of the screen capture images of a finger or other object touching (or almost touching) the screen, and calculating the point (or points) of touch by triangulation.

One company that uses this approach is NextWindow, whose touch panels are used on HP’s popular TouchSmart touch-interface desktop PCs and Dell’s new competitive product, the Studio One.

Today, NextWindow announced it had become the first optical touchscreen maker to earn Windows 7 logo certification from Microsoft. NextWindow believes the official launch of Windows 7 late this year will spur software publishers to develop an array of new touchscreen-enabled applications for desktops, and it expects all of the largest PC manufacturers to introduce new desktops with touch-screen monitors. DisplaySearch has projected the touchscreen market will grow to $9B by 2015, and that multi-touch functionality will be a key market driver, NextWindow said.