Enterprises May Snub iPad-Style PCsEnterprises May Snub iPad-Style PCs

Large corporations will not buy touch-enabled PCs in significant numbers for at least the next five years, due to the difficulty in moving employees away from the keyboard and mouse, a market research firm says.

In 2015, less than 10% of PCs sold to enterprises will be touch-enabled, Gartner predicted in a report released Wednesday. The slow adoption will be due to corporations' heavy requirements for typing and text input, something workers have learned to do efficiently with the keyboard and mouse.

Where touchscreens will be popular is among the younger generation. More than 50% of PCs bought for users under the age of 15 will be touch-enabled, Gartner forecasted. Such systems will be less about doing business and more about entertainment and casual gaming applications.

Helping to push touch-enabled PCs to the mainstream is the rising popularity of smartphones. As consumers get use to their touch-enabled smartphones, they'll want the same functionality on their PCs too, Gartner said.

Smartphones are the fastest growing category of the mobile phone market. As of the end of February, 45.4 million people in the United States owned smartphones, up 21% from a year ago, according to ComScore.

Tablet PCs are also pushing touch to the mainstream. Tablets, such as the iPad or HP's Windows 7-powered slate, planned for introduction this year will initially be used mostly to watch movies and read books, newspapers and magazines. However, that will change as prices drop, and schools become a major market for the devices.

Schools will become training centers for the younger generations, teaching them how to interact with computers through their screens. Over the next five years, as many as 75% of U.S. school districts will be asking suppliers for computers that have both touch and pen input.

"Consider this as the precursor to a major upcoming generational shift in how users relate to their computing devices," Gartner analyst Leslie Fiering said in a statement.

As this shift occurs, business will gradually deploy touch-enabled PCs in the workplace. While doubting the business case for adding touch, companies will be forced to make the transition, as employees increasingly bring their own PCs and technologies to work, whether sanctioned or not.

As touch-enabled PCs become more popular among consumers, software developers will rewrite applications to support the systems, making the transition for business easier.

One initial area where touch will be adopted is in graphics data analysis, making it possible for workers to manipulate graphs on their computer screens. As more touch-based analysis software becomes available, the features will move down market to more mainstream applications, Gartner said.

However, such a transition will be evolutionary and no "killer application" will change the market overnight, Gartner said. Rather, the move will be incremental with improvements in the user interface, lower hardware prices and a growing number of touch-enhanced software.

"As with many recent technology advances, touch adoption will be led by consumers and only gradually get accepted by the enterprise," Fiering said. "What will be different here is the expected widespread adoption of touch by education, so that an entire generation will graduate within the next 10 to 15 years for whom touch input is totally natural."

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