Microsoft develops shape-shifting touchscreen
Microsoft this week filed a patent application covering a novel way to construct a “tactile” touchscreen - a display that uses technical tricks to convince users they are actually touching the ridges, bumps and textures of a displayed image.
Context & Ripple Effects
The patent filing extends a quiet arms race in tactile interfaces. Microsoft had already secured a 2007 patent for a new user interface for mobile devices, and this application moves the frontier from gestures on flat glass to displays that physically convince fingers they are touching ridges, bumps and textures.
It also answers work on the other side of the table: reporting from late 2009 detailed Apple's possible tablet multi-touch tactile keyboard, suggesting both companies see texture feedback as the next differentiator after capacitive multi-touch went commodity. That the story surfaced through New Scientist rather than a broad press syndication suggests early-stage research rather than a product announcement.
First-order effects
- Microsoft gains a construction-method claim over tactile displays, giving it licensing leverage — or at minimum defensive cover — against any vendor shipping texture-simulating screens.
Second-order effects
- Apple, already linked to tactile-input concepts in its own tablet work, faces pressure to counter-file around Microsoft's claims; panel and component suppliers gain a new design axis — surface deformation — beyond resolution and touch sensitivity where they can differentiate and charge premiums.
Third-order effects
- If texture simulation ever ships in volume, competition shifts from what screens show to what they feel like, making display-construction patents rather than panel manufacturing scale the moat in an increasingly commoditized touchscreen market.
The trend: Touchscreen competition is migrating from multi-touch gestures toward hardware that simulates physical texture, with patent filings arriving years before any product.