Ever since Apple introduced the iPhone, everyone and their mama went wanted a touchscreen-equipped handset. Last year, 75% of all smartphones had a touchscreen, up from only 7% in 2006. As you can imagine, this is just a start and by 2016, 97% of all smartphones will have a touchscreen, according to ABI Research.
Unsurprisingly, ABI contributes the evolution of screen and touch technologies for this growth. The more economical resistive touch technology has been almost universally replaced in smartphones with the more elegant projected capacitive technology. However, the progress hasn’t stopped with that — today’s low-cost capacitive touch controllers use just a single layer of sensors instead of two, and save as much as 30% on the cost. As a result, even the cheaper feature phones now have capacitive touchscreens…
And that’s about all ABI had to say in its press release. Those looking to go into details will have to grab the full report from the research company’s website.