Apple's iPhone is among onslaught of products with a sensitive component
By MAY WONGAssociated Press
Posted: June 24, 2007
Santa Clara, Calif. - Get your fingers ready.
Apple Inc.'s iPhone is leading a new wave of gadgets using touch-sensitive screens that react to taps, swishes or flicks of a finger. The improvements promise to be slicker and more intuitive than the rough stomp of finger presses and stylus-pointing required by many of today's devices.
Apple already has been showing off its finger ballet in video ads ahead of the smart phone's hotly anticipated launch Friday.
Glide a finger across the screen to activate the device and main menu.
Slide your digit up or down to scroll through your contacts. Flick to flip through photos. Tap to zoom in on a Web site.
With Apple's marketing machinery, the iPhone is poised to become the poster child for the new breed of touch-screen technology, which relies on changes in electrical currents instead of pressure points.
But the iPhone will have its fair share of rivals.
Shipments of this advanced strain of touch screens are projected to jump from fewer than 200,000 units in 2006 to more than 21 million units by 2012, with the bulk of the components going to mobile phones, according to a forecast by iSuppli Corp., a market research company.
"This new user interface will be like a tsunami, hitting an entire spectrum of devices," predicted Francis Lee, the chief executive of Synaptics Inc., a maker of touch sensors.
Synaptics' latest technology is in a growing number of cell phones, including LG Electronics Co.'s LG Prada touch-screen phone that launched this year in Europe and South Korea and handles gesture-recognition similarly to the iPhone.
Last fall, Nokia Corp.'s research and development unit unveiled online images of a prototype all-touch-screen cell phone called the Aeon, but the company hasn't disclosed any details of its features or market availability.
