Global touch-screen mobile sales to soar

Apple's iPhone has led the touch-screen charge

Gartner has heralded a significant shift in the way people interact with their phones, predicting that sales of touch-screen mobile devices will grow by 96.8 per cent this year to hit 362.7 million.

The analyst firm expects touch-screen devices to account for 58 per cent of all mobile device sales worldwide by 2013, and that 80 per cent of these sales will be in the US and western Europe.

Robert Cozza, principal research analyst at Gartner, argued that the figures underline a shift of touch-screen devices to the middle tier of the market as users become more comfortable using the technology, particularly due to the iPhone.

"Touch-screens are no longer the preserve of high-end devices. As phone capabilities increase, users are becoming much more aware of the benefits of touch interfaces, and vendors are responding," he said.

Cozza explained that many mobile phone vendors will now look to integrate touch technologies by delivering interfaces optimised for touch input.

"Vendor and industry focus on touch interfaces will bring increasing sophistication, and spur the adoption of touch in other consumer electronics devices," he said.

Cozza added that capacitive touch-screens will become the mainstream technology over time, but that he expects resistive touch-screens to remain on the market as a low-cost alternative.

Sales of touch-screen devices are largest in the Asian markets, where Gartner predicts 129.1 million sales in 2010, around 35 per cent of the global market.

However, penetration is largest in the European Union and the US, where 49 and 46 per cent respectively of all mobile device sales in these markets are touch-screen devices.