Phone Makers Seek Right Touch

Motorola (MOT Quote) -- the fallen phone king that once led the market with the introduction of flip-phones, skinny phones and the Razr, its ultra-skinny flip-phone -- remains behind the curve. Motorola is working on touchscreen phones, and executives have said as recently as September that the company may introduce a touchscreen phone in the U.S. "at some point."

One investor who has recently toured some Asian tech companies says touchscreen technology as attracted a strong interest among developers. He says one of the big areas of excitement is capacitive touchscreens that can sense the electrons in a user's fingers as opposed to the pressure of the touch.

There is also strong interest in multi-touch technology used by Apple's iPhone that senses two fingers and allows functions such as widening and shrinking of pictures.

"We are moving toward a much different user interface," says the investor. "We are going from buttons and knobs to touch and voice commands."

There are three big publicly traded players in the touchscreen technology arena. German tech shop Balda, which trades on that country's exchange, has a 50% stake in China's TPK, which has been reported as the supplier of iPhone's touchscreen technology.

Two other players are touchscreen touch-pad giant Synaptics (SYNA Quote) and Cypress Semiconductor (CY Quote), a chip supplier to companies including Apple.

Next: The ultra-skinny folding touchscreen from the future.