Shipments of touchscreen operator terminals to double in under 6 years
22 July 2008
Global touchscreen operator terminal shipments are forecast to exceed 2 million units in 2012, more than double the quantity in 2006. Products with displays of less than 5.5” and greater than 15.0” will grow even faster than this.
Shipments of touchscreen operator terminals to double in under 6 years
Extensive consultation with operator terminal suppliers found that machine builders and end users increasingly prefer to use either very compact touchscreen operator terminals or products with displays at the top end of the range. The most influential reasons were decreasing display costs, increasing display performance and, in the case of the larger displays, the ability to display more information.
The EMEA and Asia Pacific regions are expected to experience the fastest growth for both the smallest and largest categories of touchscreen operator terminal. Market analyst, Mark Watson, commented “The trend seen previously in the desktop PC market for users to adopt larger displays is now also visible in the market for touchscreen operator terminals. The trend for desktop PC users to move from 15” displays to 17” displays was seen two to three years ago, and this is now beginning to be seen in the IPC market. The EMEA operator terminal market is now also moving to products with larger display sizes. End users require increasingly larger displays in order to present greater amounts of more detailed process or machinery data. This, together with falling costs, is driving the trend to larger display sizes. Operator terminals with 15.0” displays are likely to be the largest in the market for the foreseeable future.”