…and touchscreens up to 27 inches on the way…
Not sure what to make about this notice I got out of Korea today, that said that manufacturers there just got orders for touch-sensitive displays in much larger sizes than they have ever tried to deal with before.
According to Displaybank, this spring will see the rollout of touchscreen devices in 10.1, 13.3 and even 16.1 inch diagonal sizes, and this summer will have screens in the 21.5, 23.6 and 27 inch sizes.
Of course, the other news that was interesting is the projection that within the next three years, more than 30% of the cellphones in the world will be using touchscreen technology.
That looks to be about 500 million units; as we’ve seen from the iPhone, one of the key results of having a touchscreen User Interface on mobile devices is that it makes browsing the web actually possible. Yeah, yeah, the Blackberry had the trackball, and some people still swear by it – but I’ve tried it, and it’s just not as intuitive or useful as pointing and tapping on a link, to say nothing of using the pinch/pull multitouch functions to make items contract/expand.
So having the global market expand with devices whose main strength is that they make browsing not only do-able, but fun – means that there is going to be this big & powerful driver pushing people to the mobile web in the next few years. Even more so than the “there’s an app for that” meme taking root with the public, the fact that all the other handsets are going to be iPhone-like, is going to be a huge change.
Meanwhile, I wonder if the larger die sizes for the touchscreens means that there are going to be “upgrades” to the tablet market? One of the most insightful things I heard last week at OMMA Global in San Francisco was that “it’s not the iPad itself that’s the revolutionary change – it’s the 30, 40, 50 other tablet devices that are going to follow in its footsteps that are going to be disruptors.” I can see the thinking in some quarters of unimaginative Corporate America – that they’ll be just like the iPad – ONLY BIGGER!!11!!eleven! Kinda like the Kindle DX, I guess – although I really can’t make much of a use case for hauling around a 27-inch tablet device. Damn thing would weight about 15 pounds, and the battery life would be maybe 10 minutes.
But you could watch some really nice high-def videos in that time, I guess…
