Acer forecasts that touchscreen laptops will make up a third of all those shipped this year. Looking even further ahead the company said that it expects up to 80 per cent of its products to utilise touchscreen interfaces in a year’s time. A further Taiwan-centric report says that touchscreen notebooks will account for around 40 per cent of those sold in Q3 this year.
Just ahead of the Computex show Acer Chairman JT Wang told Reuters in an interview that touchscreen models are expected to rise to 30-35 percent of total notebook PC sales. In the current quarter the figure is around 25 per cent. He predicted that manufacturing yields and costs for touchscreen components will continue to improve; “Price and supply for touch panels provide some constraints now but that will ease and boost the penetration of touch devices,” said Wang.
Acer wants to push ahead in the tablet market and though it only shipped 1.2 million tablets in Q1 it has a target of between 5 and 10 million for the full year. Acer introduced the Intel Atom powered Iconia W3 8-inch Windows 8 tablet at Computex yesterday alongside some updated Aspire notebooks, following its Liquid S1 phablet reveal.
DigiTimes reports that the price premiums on touchscreen notebooks can now be reduced as “issues such as poor touch panel yields and costs” are resolved. As this has happened price differentials between touch and non-touch enabled devices has dropped from over 20 per cent to around 10 per cent. This has lowered the touchscreen price threshold and is encouraging customers to purchase laptops with touch enabled screens.
In Taiwan DigiTimes predicts touchscreens to make up 40 per cent of shipped notebooks in Q3, a bit better than the Acer Chairman’s global expectation. The computer industry news organ says that touchscreen price moves by Acer and ASUS have caused reactionary price manoeuvring by the likes of HP, Sony and Lenovo.
Looking at the possible impact of the introduction of the new Intel Haswell range DigiTimes forecasts that cheaper Ivy Bridge chip prices may also help increase the affordability of touchscreen notebooks.
