Next generation user interfaces: touch, gesture, motion and voice

Paul Erickson, senior analyst with the Consumer Electronics Group of IMS Research, gave a presentation of findings from the recently published study Next Generation User Interfaces: Touch, Gesture, Motion and Voice. Top level findings included a total available market opportunity for devices utilizing advanced user interface technology growing from less than 1 billion devices shipped in 2011 to nearly 9.1 billion in 2015.

By Shane Walker, Director, Consumer Electronics Group, IMS Research December 14, 2011

The Touch, Gesture, Motion Conference held last week in Austin, TX by IMS Conferences was a great success, with over 30 leading companies speaking on advances in next generation user interfaces. The conference offered a balance of in-depth content covering touch technologies on the first day followed by gesture and motion on the second day. Paul Erickson, senior analyst with the Consumer Electronics Group of IMS Research, gave a presentation of findings from the recently published study Next Generation User Interfaces: Touch, Gesture, Motion and Voice. Top level findings included a total available market opportunity for devices utilizing advanced user interface technology growing from less than 1 billion devices shipped in 2011 to nearly 9.1 billion in 2015. Thanks largely to television sets, devices utilizing gesture-based control are forecast to experience the largest amount of growth during the period, followed by devices utilizing motion control.  Also, it was found that shipments of next generation UI technologies will grow from nearly 896,000 units in 2010 to nearly 3.8 billion units in 2015. The report goes on to explain in detail how these shipments will be split amongst the four technologies. Part of this analysis includes the impact on the BOM for each product covered.

This new study expands on IMS Research’s previous coverage of technologies transforming the human-machine-computer interface by providing a comparative analysis of touch, gesture, motion and voice within one study. An explanation of each technology is presented, along with detailed quantitative estimates and forecasts for key consumer product categories including smartphones, televisions, set-top boxes, Blu-ray players, public displays, game consoles, tablets, PCs, portable computing devices, sports monitors and light vehicles. As part of the quantitative analysis, shipments, revenues and ASPs are presented. Revenues in this report are solely for technology supporting the advanced user interface; this is explained in more detail later in this chapter. The report is also highly qualitative in nature, as these technologies are still emerging into the consumer market. This qualitative analysis includes a discussion of markets trends, implementation costs and barriers to entry for each technology.