More than 50 per cent of the personal computers purchased for users under the age of 15 will have touch screens by 2015 in comparison to 10 per cent by enterprises , a study of Gartner, an information technology and advisory company said.
The use of touch screen computers stood at 2 per cent in 2009 for users under the age of 15.
“We are going to see younger generation using touch screen computers ahead of enterprises,” Leslie Fiering, research vice president at Gartner said.
The earliest adopters of touch-enabled devices will be youngsters without any legacy issues and who are mostly looking for entertainment and casual gaming applications, the report said.
As per Gartner, iPhone and touch-enabled smartphone users will look for extending the multi-touch experience to their PC computing which will give boost to the market.
Also, Apple’s iPad and other slates, tablet and touch-enabled convertible for 2010 will set the tone for this emerging market.
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“One of the key target usages for the next wave of tablets will be media content consumption like movies, newspapers and e-books and the real success driver for entertainment devices will be the content delivery ecosystem. If this category succeeds, it will create greater market awareness for touch screen in PCs,” the report said.
Referring to sectors having high possibility of penetration, the report said that education would emerge as a major market for touch and pen-enabled devices.
Younger children just entering the school find direct manipulation on the screen a natural way to interact with their computers and older students are already using pen input to annotate class material or capture formula and graphics that can’t be recorded with key boards, the report said.
“Consensus among the US school districts, which are clients of Gartner, is that as many as many as 75 per cent, will be specifying touch and pen input within the next five years,” the report said.
Similarly, restaurants, retail and health care providers like patient admittance, charting and patient records are expected to be the largest adopters among enterprises.
Touch screen, which have already seen applications for field service, law enforcement, and automated teller machines (ATMs), will also find its way to workers involved in data analysis through graphics, the report said.
However, enterprises will be slow to adopt touch input for mainstream knowledge workers as per the report.
“The long tail of legacy enterprise applications that don’t leverage touch and the large contingent of mouse-trained employees, will make it difficult for faster penetration of this technology,” the report said.
About speed of adoption, Gartner said that the progress would be evolutionary than revolutionary.
“No single ‘killer application’ will change the market overnight. Rather, there will be an incremental introduction of user interface and ergonomics improvements, drop in hardware prices and increase in touch-enhanced software,” the report said.