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Monitors monitor's monitoring finds touch screens have 0.4% market share

Not four. Point four. Count yer booty again, Microsoft

Market monitor IDC's latest word on monitors goes some way to explaining limp enthusiasm for Windows 8: people just aren't buying touch-screen monitors.

Windows 8's user interface was designed to work on mouse-driven and poke-enabled devices. It's racked up plenty of sales, but not much love.

The analyst outfit's latest Worldwide Quarterly PC Monitor Tracker records that just 0.4 per cent of monitor sales are for touch-screen devices. To put that in perspective, the monitors monitor says Q2 2014 saw 32.5 million monitors shipped.

Monitors is one of those markets in which “Other” does very well and owns about 40 per cent of the market. The five biggest named vendors are Dell on a tic over 15 per cent market share and five million units shipped for the quarter, Samsung at 4.16m units, HP with 3.89m, Lenovo at 3.19m and LG at 3.05m units and just under ten per cent market share.

Those numbers aren't going to get any prettier in coming years: IDC says that by 2018 annual monitor sales will be just 107m.

It seems we're moving to tablets and laptops, but even in the latter category touch screens aren't a must-have item. Rival monitors monitor DisplaySearch has previously said that just 11 per cent of laptops shipped with touch screens in 2013, and that by 2017 that figure will grow to 40 per cent. That's still a healthy 60 million or so touchy laptops, but still not more than half the market.

Little wonder Microsoft looks to be bringing back the mouse-friendly Start button in Windows 9. ®

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