Technology matures, cost drops, capacitive touch will prevail
With the popularity of iPhone touch phones, the professional term of capacitive touch is gradually known. The brand-new experience it brings is due to the difference between its technology and traditional resistive touch. Compared with the latter, it has a higher penetration rate and more realistic color rendering, which can be operated with only a touch, and can realize multi-touch, with easier and flexible maneuverability and a longer service life . Therefore, more and more electronic equipment manufacturers hope to use capacitive touch technology in their products. However, due to the late appearance of this technology and the short time to market, the issue of whether it can be quickly promoted and generally accepted by consumers has naturally become the focus of industry attention.
Technology and cost are barrier-free for promotion
There are actually two implementation technologies for capacitive touch, one is SCT (Surface Capacitive Touch) and the other is PCT (Projected Capacitive Touch). According to experts, the two technologies have their own advantages and disadvantages.
"PCT has obvious advantages over SCT in terms of cost, power consumption, lifespan, contacts, etc. It is suitable for consumer electronics products such as mobile phones, notebook computers, GPS, Internet phones, home appliances, etc. But SCT also has its own advantages, and now mainly Used in Kiosk, POS terminal, ATM, game console, bulletin board, security system and other fields. "Zhang Pei, CEO of Asia Pacific, International Touch (Asia Pacific) Co., Ltd. told reporters.
JonKiachan, senior marketing president of Atmel ’s touch technology department, believes that because PCT has a true multi-touch function that surface touch technology cannot provide, this function is rapidly becoming consumer electronics, household appliances, white goods and various other applications. Standard requirements, so it will develop rapidly.
Capacitive touch is obviously superior to resistive touch in terms of user experience and performance, which is why it quickly becomes an alternative technology for resistive touch, but its promotion time has only been more than 2 years. Maturity will naturally be questioned. It is understood that the early capacitive touch products have defects such as serious light emission, uneven light transmittance, drift, etc. Are these problems solved now? This is probably what consumers want to know most.
This point is affirmed from the manufacturer's answer. Cai Zhengdi, China Marketing Manager of Human-Machine Touch Interface Division of ELAN Electronics Co., Ltd., told reporters that the current performance of capacitive touch products has been quite stable, and the related optical performance, linearity, position drift and other issues have also been resolved. There has been considerable progress, and the current technological maturity has been able to meet the performance requirements of most related products. More and more large domestic and foreign manufacturers have adopted capacitive touch screens as related product design and application, which proves this.
Hongwei Wei, CEO of Suzhou Hanrui Microelectronics Co., Ltd., said that the main defect of the capacitive screen is that when the environmental temperature and humidity change, and the environmental electric field changes, the capacitance changes, causing drift. But their IC can tolerate higher impedance. For ITO, the higher the impedance, the better the light transmittance, and they use a unique scanning method to solve the effect of drift.
In addition to product maturity, the industry has also worried that cost issues will hinder the promotion of capacitive touch products. It is reported that the current module price of capacitive touch screen is relatively high, about 1.4 to 2 times that of flat-screen resistive touch screen.
But to the reporter's surprise, this cost difference with resistive products is not seen by suppliers as an obstacle to product popularization. This is because capacitive touch is currently used in mid-to-high-end products. It is different from resistive touch in positioning. Moreover, the use of capacitive touch in mid-to-high-end products, especially smartphones, is the future trend. Zhang Pei said: "Comparing the cost of a capacitive touch screen with a traditional resistive touch screen is a misunderstanding, because both performance and technology are very different grades of products. Why no one said that the price of the iPhone is high because there is no Comparable reference. "
It is precisely because capacitive touch technology is superior to other solutions that it has been adopted by more and more consumer electronics products, which is the driving force of its development, although it still has a certain cost difference compared with resistive touch screen . JonKiachan believes that capacitive touch products are quickly becoming the mainstream of the market, and mass production is driving down the overall price, but it is only a matter of time. Hong Jinwei also said that one of the main reasons for the high cost of capacitive screens is that the industry chain has not been perfected, and there is no scale cost advantage. With the official release of the Windows 7 operating system, there has been a global touch boom, and many laptops are currently big. The factory has been mass-produced in small batches, and the capacitive touch will be popularized in the second half of 2010.
Manufacturers are also working to reduce the cost of products through technical efforts to gain more cost-sensitive product markets and accelerate the popularity of capacitive touch products. Atmel, for example, is developing multiple innovative products to drive the cost reduction of capacitive touch solutions. Hong Jinwei told reporters that Hanrui will develop a new chip in the fourth quarter of this year. This chip integrates the MCU and the touch chip to achieve smaller size and lower cost. It is reported that some manufacturers have also introduced products that integrate touch sensors into MCUs with a higher level of integration.
Multiple touches and large sizes are trends
The development of the application market has also promoted the continuous progress of capacitive touch technology. In the past, capacitive touch screens were considered to be touchable only with fingers. Now, many manufacturers' products can support multi-touch of fingers and pens at the same time, and can even provide capacitive touch screen solutions for glove drawing or signature capture and symbol recognition. On the contacts, achieving more touch points is a significant feature, these are the future development trend.
Zhang Pei told reporters that for finger operation, pen operation, wearing gloves operation or signature recognition has been an important development direction, different product application areas have required different touch methods, and their company ’s touch screen has achieved these special properties, and More and more fields are applied. For example, pen touch is used in the teaching field, gloves are used in the medical industry, and a touch screen signature system is used in the POS terminal.
The development of screen size has also entered a new stage. According to Zhang Pei, the maximum size of their mass-produced screens can now be 22 inches, and samples of 42-inch screens have been developed.
The emergence of large-size screen products provides the possibility for more application fields, and the release of Microsoft Windows7 will greatly promote the development of large and medium capacitive touch screens. At present, after small-sized mobile phones, larger-sized terminal devices such as notebook computers, MP4, PND, MID, e-books, study desks, bar counters, GPS and other markets are rapidly developing, among which notebook computers and e-books are expected to become The most potential application market after the mobile phone.
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