ANALYSIS - Touchscreen PCs more hype than reality?

By Kelvin Soh

TAIPEI (Reuters) - Touchscreen technology is sweeping the consumer electronics market as technology brands hope to come up with the next iPhone, but these new toys could be little more than plenty of hype especially in the PC market.

Major phone and PC makers such as Nokia, Research in Motion Hewlett-Packard and Asustek have launched touchscreen-enabled products, aiming to ride the trend of what they expect to be the next big thing.

Microsoft's impending launch of its next-generation Windows 7 operating system is expected to give the budding technology a further boost, bringing a software that supports such capabilities into millions of home and office PCs.

But most consumers may not find touchscreen PCs very different from their usual laptop or desktop PCs, and the technology is unlikely to spread beyond mobile phones.

"I don't think it's going to be the next big thing by any means, but just more and more brands are going into it," said IDC analyst Jay Chou.

"The software's still in an embryonic stage, and until that changes, hopefully with Windows 7, it's still going to be a while more before we see things taking off."

Touchscreens, once only commonly found in supermarket checkout counters and airports and banks, jumped to the forefront of consumer technology thanks to Apple's popular iPhone, inspiring a whole list of knock-offs in the process.

PC brands' previous forays into touchscreens have fizzled, with products such as the tablet PC not living up to its initial hype when they were first launched more than a decade ago, with its popularity has dwindling.