Historically the main supplier in the Capacitive Touch Sensor market has been 3M with little competition and a resultant premium price being charged for products. A number of new products are now becoming available, particularly from Far East suppliers, opening up the Capacitive market and making this technology much more competitively priced.

Capacitive touch is still the industry favourite for ATM, Kiosk and other public user interfaces due to its durability and high light transmission. It is the most accurate touch technology for finger touch applications as well as signature capture. Projected capacitive technology, for example, enables touches to be sensed through a protective layer in front of the display, allowing touch monitors to be installed behind store windows or vandal resistant glass.

Resistive touch screen technology will always be popular as it can also be operated while wearing gloves, but, with increasing expectations on touch screen displays to perform in demanding environments, capacitive touch will stay the course longer than its resistive counterpart. Similarly Surface Acoustic Wave technology will succumb to these pressures as key international patents are due to expire this year and in 2006. Watch this space!

With the financial constraints attached to volume ATM and Kiosk production, the addition of new and affordable capacitive products to the market place will bring this technology back to the forefront of public access display products.