We have reached the stage in the personal navigation devices (PND) market where many consumers are on their second or third PND purchase, and they are becoming much more technologically savvy. The gee-whiz days of astonishment of seeing your location on a map has given way to “How easy is this to use?” Consumers are learning that not all GPS devices are created equal.

From a personal perspective, having tried the majority of newly introduced PNDs over the years, I have found that some manufacturers’ interfaces are very intuitive and simple, while  others are confusing and time-consuming to learn. When you’re traveling in a car at 55 miles per hour, trying to watch the road and squeeze the right answer out of your GPS, the world is a dangerous place. The new touchscreen technology should help immensely.

Technology evolution almost always follows the same path. First comes the core enabling technology. Second come the delivery systems: the satellite constellation in the case of GNSS, or cell towers in the case of cellular. Third come the devices that enable the user to utilize the technology (PC, cell phone, PND). Early on in each case, manufacturers struggled to develop device interfaces that were user friendly — but seldom suceeded. The classic examples are found in user reactions to early versions of DOS, Windows, Netscape, and Internet Explorer from a software side. On the GPS hardware side, early devices provided a very user unfriendly lat-long without a map to give visual context.

But technology always either evolves or dies. The cycle stabilizes: size, weight, and power requirements shrink, prices become affordable, and the features that consumers want become more defined. Form factor and human interface then become paramount in the evolutionary process.

Old Touch, New Touch

In the past three to four years, we have seen the advent of voice controls, spoken navigation directions, and larger displays for ease of view in the GPS mobile environment. It’s still a pain to reach from behind the wheel while the car is bumping along and try to get your finger on a touchscreen button. But the touchscreen is evolving as the most popular significant feature which will allow a better interface between man/woman and machine.

Touchscreen technology typically falls into two categories: resistive and capacitive. Resistive has been around for quite a while and reacts to single-finger pushes to the screen to pull up or change a function. Most popular PND devices employ this type of touchscreen. Capacitive (exemplified by the iPhone) affords users a multitude of interactive abilities such as swiping from one application to another, moving and resizing screens, pinching in our out with two fingers to zoom the screen image in or out — in sum, the ability to setup or interact with the interface in a way that makes most sense to the user, versus an out-of-the-can interface that was preloaded on the PND before purchase. Due to high demand for capacitive touchscreens, the price has fallen near the levels of resistive touchscreens, opening the door for a wide dispersal from the original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).

CApacitive screen by Synaptics on a GoPal
from Medion of Essen, Germany

Wow Factor and Players

One of the capacitive touchscreen players out of the blocks is Synaptics of Santa Clara, California. According to corporate communications manager Rebecca Parr, “Capacitive touch sensing technology takes advantage of an electrical property called capacitance. When two electrically conductive objects come near each other without touching, their electric fields interact to form capacitance. Your finger is also an electrical conductor. So when you place it on the protective screen of an iPhone or other device with a capacitive touchscreen, a tiny capacitance forms between your finger and the metal electrodes in the sensor/screen beneath the screen. By sensing increases in capacitance, the device can tell precisely where your finger is touching, detect what interactive gestures or motions you’re making, and respond appropriately.

“For GPS device designers, manufacturers, and marketers, these enhanced touchscreens mean a better and expanded user experience. No matter how great the GPS technology is, capacitive touchscreens simply provide a better, richer user experience every time they pick up the device. From a bottom-line perspective, capacitive technology lets OEMs and others add value to the device, protecting margins and price points. Its key benefits, giving users an easy way to get to and use new functions, are:

• Enabling users to see what they’re doing. Capacitive touchscreens are easily used/viewed in even the most difficult lighting conditions.
• Bringing gestures to GPS. Device designers can choose from an almost unlimited range of advanced, multi-touch gestures that serve as interactive cues.
• Boosting value. Capacitive interfaces help ensure that GPS devices have high value to the consumer, maintaining price points and boosting profitability.
• Meeting the challenge of high-temperature environments. Capacitive touchscreens perform well even in hot cars, where you often find GPS devices. Performance is consistent and not affected by temperature changes and humidity.
• Moving smoothly. Users find it simple, since it’s designed for accurate, finger-optimized performance.
• Offering a range of form options for device designers.”

Another player launching capacitive touchscreen tech, Cypress Semiconducter of San Jose, California, recently rolled out a TrueTouch system based on a programmable system-on-chip architecture. This includes a single-chip touchscreen that can interpret up to 10 inputs from all areas of the screen simultaneously, according to Cypress. Designed for consumer products such as mobile handsets, portable media players, and GPS systems, it touts a multi-touch all-point capability that interprets single touches and gestures such as tap, double-tap, pan, pinch, scroll, and rotate.

Burgeoning Market

Research firm iSuppli stated in May that “Catalyzed by Apple’s highly successful iPhone, sales of touchscreens using projected capacitive technology are growing dramatically. Projected capacitive touchscreen technology is more durable and has better transmittance than the more commonly used resistive technology. The total number of touchscreen technologies including those in production and emerging products has increased from 16 distinct approaches in mid-2007 to 20 different touchscreen technologies this month.”

According to Jennifer Colegrove, senior analyst for emerging displays, “New touchscreen technologies are being commercialized and 12 types of touchscreen technologies now have commenced mass production. Projected capacitive technology grew at the fastest rate of all the touch technologies in 2007, with 10.5 million units shipped, for a value of $222 million.”

iSuppli forecasts that projected capacitive touchscreens will maintain high growth momentum and reach 123.5 million units and $1.3 billion in revenue by 2013. The worldwide overall market for all touchscreen modules will amount to 341 million units and $3.4 billion in value in 2008. iSuppli forecasts that the market will grow to 833 million units by 2013, expanding at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.5 percent from 2008, and predicts global touchscreen module revenue growth to $6.4 billion by 2013, at a CAGR of 13.7 percent from 2008.

Nokia, Samsung, LG, Blackberry, HP, and other phone manufacturers are already incorporating touch-sensing technology into their phones following the interest developed by the iPhone.

FIGURE 1. Worldwide touchscreen module forecast

“Competition among touchscreen technologies isn’t a winner-take-all situation like Betamax versus VHS or BluRay versus HD-DVD,” concludes Synaptics’ Parr. “Each technology has its ideal applications in consumer devices. But for interactivity and innovative input, capacitive technology unlocks new potential in a next-generation GPS device.”

GPS is a very suitable marketplace in which to extend the technology, as GPS device manufacturers are struggling to recapture the hearts and buying power of consumers after a miserable showing and declining sales over the first and second quarters. Banner sales figures of the past holiday season fan the desire to introduce something new and exciting in the hearts and minds of every GPS executive. At the year’s halfway point, only a short time remains to ready something cool for holiday season ’08.

Reach out and touchSomebody’s handMake this world a better placeIf you can…— Diana Ross / Ashford-Simpson