Tag Archives: active pen 2017 report

HP ZBook X2 and active pen market

October 18, 2017.  By Jennifer Colegrove Ph.D.

Today, HP just announced the new ZBook X2 detachable PC with a Wacom’s active pen with 4096 pressure sensitive levels. The active pen has natural tilt and almost zero latency.

Figure: HP ZBook x2 with Wacom pen

Source: HP

HP is the earlier adopter of active pen. Its TouchSmart 12.1” NB PCs has adopted N-trig’s DuoSense active pen technology around 2009. HP is the company which has tried many types of active pens in the past 8 years.

Fourteen major brands’ adoption of active pen is analyzed in the Active pen 2017 report.

About 4 months ago, Apple just announced two new iPad Pro: the 10.5 inch version and the 12.9 inch version with active pens.

The active pen industry landscape has changed dramatically in the recent 3 years: Companies actively working on active pens has increased from 60 companies in 2014 to over 120 companies in 2017. These over 120 companies’ profiles are in the excel database. The strengths and weaknesses of key players are analyzed in this report.

The Active Pen 2017 Report provides the detail pen technologies analysis of 21 types of pen: 13 active pen and 8 passive pens.

There is no perfect active pen yet in the market. The 10 key characters of an ideal active pen are analyzed in chapter 8. This report provides not only the outlook for active pen and penetration in touch devices, but also provide Bill of Material (BOM) analysis of active pen module for “pen only” and “pen and finger” touch in chapter 7.

Over 100 devices with active pen are compared side by side with pen technologies and pen suppliers in the excel database.

Touch Display Research forecasted the active pen market will grow rapidly in the next several years.

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Jennifer Colegrove and team

DSC and digital pen market

May 17, 2017 by Jennifer Colegrove Ph.D.

Today, Digital Stationery Consortium (DSC) announced more new members and the formation of three new working groups.  Founded by Wacom in 2016, DSC is an association with the shared mission to advocate the value of digital pen, ink and paper.

Touch Display Research had a chance to interview Mr. Faik Karaoglu, Officer of the Digital Stationery Consortium and Senior Vice President of Wacom’s Platforms and Apps Business Unit. We asked their relationship with Universal Stylus Initiative (USI), another industry association. (Here is the blog about we interviewed Mr. Pete Mueller, Chairman of USI and Principal Engineer/Senior Technologist at Intel.) Mr. Karaoglu replied that they are not competing, rather they are complimentary to each other. USI is focusing on hardware: the active pen; DSC is focusing on the software and usage cases.

Digital pen input is very useful in education, certain language input, medical, finance, industry applications, and content creation. Active pen technology is superior to passive in terms of accuracy, pressure sensing, and input of fine line. In the recently published “Active Pen Technologies, Supply Chain and Market Forecast 2017 Report (Third Edition),” Touch Display Research Inc. forecasted that active pen usage will have rapid growth in the next several years.

Figure: Active pen 2017 market report

The active pen market has attracted over 120 companies. We analyzed more than twenty digital pen technologies, which include thirteen active pen technologies and eight passive pen technologies. The active pen industry is going through re-shuffling, market shares of leading pen protocols are forecasted in this report.

Thanks for reading,

Dr. Jennifer Colegrove and team