Touchscreen Notebook Shipments To Grow By 70% In This Quarter

The release of Windows 8 has dynamically altered the touchscreen computers landscape, with hardware vendors and market analysts both weighing in on the future of touch enabled PCs.

It seems that every weak comes with new analysis and statistics, particularly on the touch-enabled laptop and ultrabooks market.

This much is known that the industry (touch panel makers, more specifically) is overly cautious to increase production of touch panels lest it unbalances the supply and demand scale. Nevertheless, this latest forecast is one of the most refreshing and ambitious yet.

A report over at DigiTimes cites sources from the upstream supply chain, which paint a promising picture as far as shipments of touchscreen notebooks and laptops are concerned.

While the overall notebook shipments are only expected to see a surge of 4 or 5 percent in the second quarter of 2013, touch-based models are said to experience a remarkable increase of no less than 70 percent.

This latest forecast puts shipment of touch-enabled laptops in the range of 4.2 million units — a sure enough sign that production yield rate of touch panels is set to improve in the coming months.

But that’s not all. Another report over at the site claims that touch panel prices are also set to witness a price drop from the $70 and $80 range to $50 per unit, which itself would have a positive effect on the overall prices touch-enabled notebooks.

Meaning we may be in for some significant price drops on these models before the year is out.

All said and done, if there is one company that would be exalted with this forecast, it’s Microsoft. The Redmond-based technology titan has often lambasted the lack of touch-enabled computers in the market, and classified this fact as one of the reasons for slow uptake of Windows 8.