Touchscreens getting big for Asian market

ABI Research’s latest report took a look at the growing popularity of touchscreen devices and what their future is looking like. Since 2006, shipments have nearly doubled, and forecasts are claiming a $5 billion market in 2009. As promising as that sounds, the increasing adoption differs widely according to geography. For example, Samsung and Motorola (NYSE: MOT) are rocking roughly a third of the touchscreen market each because they’ve effectively targeted Asia, which is ready to adopt something with easy character recognition. On the other side of the coin, BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM)’s had a rough time in Japan exactly because input is considerably trickier on a QWERTY device. The iPhone is obviously doing its fair share to improve the popularity of touchscreens and intuitive user interface is a big factor for shoppers, it’s still considered a niche compared to the big boys. I’m curious to see if the recently-scoped BlackBerry 9500 will suffer the same fate, or if it will have better luck with the mainstream…

[via ABI]