14 DAY TRIAL // As it happens around the end of each year, speculations start to be made on what will or will not happen over the next 12 months in regards to various market segments, this once that of touch panels being under scrutiny.
As some may have suspected, vendors of touch panels saw very good business this year, especially thanks to the many smartphones and tablets that were sold.
Also, with new touch and multi-touch technologies cropping up, one can expect this market to keep evolving.
The iPad alone sold about 10 million units, and it is not even the only tablet on sale anymore, so sales of 7-inch and 10-inch touch panels are guaranteed to rise in 2011.
Knowing all this, first-tier makers of touch panels are doing their best to expand their capacity, to the point where they should double in 2011.
Still, even with such actions, some believe, like Cypress (says Digitimes), that the supply of touchscreens will be rather tight next year anyway.
Cypress started selling touch panels in 2008 and grew to become one of the three greatest IC suppliers after the demand for handset touch panels surged in 2010.
It is already making touch control ICs for tablets and expects that the second half of 2011 will mark the maturation of the European and US touch industries.
One of the most interesting phenomenon will be the market share struggle between resistive touch panels and capacitive ones.
Resistive screens held 70% of the market in 2009, only to fall to about 30% in 2010. Since all handsets are expected to switch over to capacitive, one can expect the former to end up as a side-option soon enough.
Regardless, even with all capacity expansions, the tablet market will reach about 60 million, while the handset market will show growth of its own, meaning that the supply of touch panels might not be enough to meet next year's demand.