With the decline in PC sales year over year, PC manufacturers are finding new ways to push sales in a cost effective way. The touchscreen tablets like iPad have started to dominate the markets since the past few years and PC sales have fell down by 3.7% in 2012 and predicted to fall by another 1.3% in 2013. Microsoft launched the Windows 8 operating system aiming at integrating the iPad like touch screen experience and the typical desktop experience. As far as tablets are concerned Microsoft was quite good at doing it but it is taking a toll on the regular laptop and PC market.
Another interesting fact is that touch based laptops and PCs running Windows 8 seems to be more usable and having better user satisfaction. But the only problem seems to be with the price of implementing touch on large screens. A typical 27″ touch panel right now will add around 180$ to the device and a tablet size panel will add 45$ which push the end price of the product quite high.
To fight this away, manufacturers like Fujifilm, Amtel and UniPixel are coming up with a new touchscreen manufacturing technology. Current touch screen make use of rare earth metals like indium tin oxide (ITO) which is quite difficult to produce and implement in a device due to its brittle nature. But right now Fujifilm is trying to manufacture touchscreen based out o silver halide to create nearly-invisible meshes of fine wires capable of detecting touch input. And in the case of Uni-Pixel, the new tech is copper-based, consisting of a grid printed onto rolls of plastic, bypassing the typical manufacturing process for most touchscreens and producing a more durable product.
If this process comes true and manufacturers are actually able to produce them at a cheaper price and in larger quantities then we can expect a surge of touchscreen based Windows 8 PCs and Laptops this year. Even with the current trend touchscreen based PCs and Laptops are predicted to hit the markets with a share of 12.5% in 2013.