The medium-smallsized touch panel here refers to the cater corner distance is less than 10 inch. The large-size touch panel is usually used in the public places for the information query, while the medium-small sized touch panel is mainly used in the cell phone, PDA, navigation and other consumption electronics fields. In addition, the touch pad is different from the touch panel, and the laptops all have the touch pad, while which can not show any information.

The touch panel can be divided into five classifications by technique, the vector pressure sensor touch panel, resistive touch panel, capacitive touch panel, infrared touch panel and surface acoustic wave touch panel, and the vector pressure sensor touch panel has wiped out now.

The price of the infrared touch panel is low, while its frame is fragile, it is easy to produce the light interface, and distorts under the bend surface. The design of the capacitive touch panel is good, while it is difficult to solve the distortion fundamentally. The positioning of the resistive touch panel is exact, but is it easy to be scraped. The surface acoustic wave touch panel has solved all the flaws of the other touch panels, it is clear and anti-explode, so it is suitable in the various places, but the drop and dust on the panel surface can make the touch panel become blunt, or even not to work. According to the working principle and information transmission medium, the touch panel can divided into four classifications, resistive touch panel, capacitive touch panel, infrared touch panel and surface acoustic wave touch panel. Due to the flexibility of cost and large amount of the information, the consumer electronics field nearly all uses the resistive touch panel. Now, the latest IPHONE is the special capacitive touch panel, which is called Projected Capacitive Technology, PCT, and which was developed by Zytronic in 2005; in addition, it nearly includes all the advantages and, the shortcoming is the too high cost.

The research and development of the touch panel was started in America in the 1960s, while the technology maturity and expansion should attribute to the Japan TP field. As the continuous popularization of the application, Japan TP field developed the TP production technology fit for the batch production, and then controlled more than 80% of the TP output capability in the world gradually. The Japan TP field still insisted on not transferring the TP technology in order to control the TP production technology. Until the 1990s, South Korea and Taiwan manufacturers had made the breakthrough on the TP technology and mass production, and then they started to have their own field in the TP market, however, the output capability and technology level was still lagged far behind Japan. In mainland China, the TP manufacturing industry started late. Currently, the top ten more resistive touch panel manufacturers are mainly distributed in PRD, but the production scale is comparatively small, and the products are mainly the low-level digital TP, and with the low labor force cost to carry on the low price market competition.

Presently, the TP market in China is still in the start-up period, and the largest TP manufacturers in China are General Touch Technology Co., Ltd and Shenyang Shougang Huaxing Computer Co., Ltd, while the products of the both are the acoustic wave touch panel, which are mainly to use with CRT computer display, etc.

Key Resistive Touch Panel Manufacturers in Mainland China

From the above table, it can be seen that the scale of the current domestic resistive touch panel manufacturers is small, and the products are all in the low-level. Nanjing Wally Electronics Technology Co., Ltd is the largest resistive touch panel manufacturer in China, as well as the only manufacturer to provide the cell phone touch panel now, while its overall output capability is relatively small. Although the resistive touch panel manufacturers have formed the certain scale on the output, the output scale of the manufacturers is small and the grade is low now, in addition, no manufacturers can own ITO membrane plating capability, they all buy the key raw materials ¨C ITO membrane and ITO conductive glass. Due to ratio of ITO membrane and ITO conductive glass in the raw material cost accounts for 40% and 25% respectively, the production cost of the domestic resistive touch panel is everlasting high, and the manufacturers can just gain the margin profit by the low price competition via the lower labor cost.

2 Touch Panel Industry Chain
2.1 Brief Introduction of Production Flow
2.2 ITO Membrane
2.3 Global Touch Panel Industry
2.4 China Touch Panel Industry

3 Touch Panel Market
3.1 Global Market
3.1.1 Cell Phone
3.1.2 PDA
3.1.3 GPS
3.1.4 Others
3.2 China Market
3.2.1 Cell Phone
3.2.2 GPS

4 Key Manufactures of Touch Panel
4.1 Arayon Optics (Suzhou) Co., Ltd
4.2 Transtouch Technology INC
4.3 Nanjing Wally Electronics Technology Co., Ltd
4.4 Guangzhou Huayi Circuit Co., Ltd
4.5 Shenzhen Top Touch Electronics Co., Ltd
4.6 Shenzhen Huangze Optical & Electro Technology Co., Ltd
4.7 World Sense Electronics (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd
4.8 Young Fast Optoelectronics Co., Ltd
4.9 Beitai Display Technology Co., Ltd
4.10 Guangzhou Henglida Electronic Circuit Co., Ltd
4.11 Shenzhen Laibao Hi-tech Co., Ltd
4.12 TPK Optical Solutions (Xiamen) Inc
4.13 NISSHA Printing Co., Ltd