Archive for the ‘touchscreens for kindle ereaders’ tag
Amazon Buys Touchscreen Start-up no comments
The New York Times is reporting that Amazon has purchased Touchco which is a start-up specializing in touchscreen technology. The acquisition will be merged into Lab126, which is Amazon’s hardware development division.
This is exiting news for the Kindle family of ereaders. While Kindle DX2 will definitely need a touchscreen, it is a feature that is perhaps less vital for the 6-inch Kindle, at least for some users. It is however, a feature that Amazon will need to add to maintain parity with competing hardware. It could also perhaps enable Amazon to ditch the chiclet keyboard and have a larger screen on a new ereader with the same overall size as the current Kindles.
The touchscreens commonly used in current ereaders are either of the capacitive type, which Sony uses in the Sony Touch Edition and which has glare issues which detract from the reading experience, or Wacom technology which adds considerable expense and must be used with a special stylus. Endless Ideas (of BeBook fame) will be releasing their new Neo ereader on February 25. The Neo will use a touchscreen based on Wacom technology and is priced at $299. I believe that this is the lowest priced ereader using this type of touchscreen that has been announced so far.
The technology (interpolating force-sensitive resistance) developed by Touchco is said to be completely transparent and flexible, and could cost as little as $10 per square foot. It is also capable of multitouch and can accept input from either finger or stylus, or just about anything else you should choose to touch the screen with.
