Of course, there are niche products that are either ultra-thin (with subsequent negative impact on battery life) or focussed on the needs of a particular audience – such as gamers.

Laptop manufacturers are trying to innovate with hardware such as interactive touch bars or dual touchscreens but creating a design that is noticeably different is challenging. And without meaningful distinction, price becomes the most significant differentiator – driving margins lower.  What can laptop manufacturers do to provide an alternative to competition over prices?

An area well equipped to offer consumer technology designers a competitive edge is haptic touch. With the haptics market experiencing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 13% to 2026, according to Market Research Future (MRFR), the opportunity for consumer technology companies to innovate using this technology is growing rapidly.

What is haptic touch?

Haptic touch is a type of feedback that uses tiny but precise surface movements that mimic the sensations of pressing a button, tapping a key on a keyboard, scrolling on a screen, and more. Instead of only detecting the pressure of your finger on the surface, haptic touch will also register how hard you have touched a specific area of the surface and provide different, localised feedback based on this. In most current smartphones and tablets, the simple vibration is used to indicate the moment of key press, but haptics has much greater potential than this. 

Endless design options with haptics

Finger sensing and haptic touch technology offers a clear differentiator in consumer electronic devices. It enables new touch experiences based on sensing where a finger interacts with a surface to deliver contextual feedback to the user.  Consumers experience extraordinary feedback – such as gaming controls with real time feedback, and keyboards where users can choose the sensitivity of touch, all delivered via electronics.

This technology enables new design options for consumer electronics companies: haptic touch technology suits a wide range of sizes and applications – from laptop touchpads to an accessory mouse, keyboards and displays – and these can be combined to offer manufacturers slimmer and smarter devices. Subsequently, devices can house larger batteries, enabling devices to be more powerful and intelligent than those with traditional trackpads and offering manufacturers the chance to innovative in design. One of the biggest benefits of haptic touch is that it can be integrated into a host of materials, from plastic and glass to wood and leather. This gives designers greater potential to create ground-breaking devices that offer consumers differentiation.

Making manufacturing more efficient

A complex issue that laptop manufacturers face stems from the keyboards. There are in the region of 40 different keyboard variants used around the world reflecting different languages and layouts.  Separate keys need to be created and assembled into devices to make them language specific. This means that for every global laptop created, there will be upwards of 40 different models, based on the keyboard alone, adding significant complexity to the supply chain.  It also complicates the issue of shifting stock being between high selling and low selling locations – a laptop with a Korean keyboard will be of no use to an English-speaking consumer, without significant alteration.

Haptic touch can offer consumer device manufacturers a universal keyboard that can be programmed to change languages without requiring any changes to the underlying device’s hardware - much like a mobile phone can be set up in different languages - whilst keeping the feeling of typing on “real” keys. This would allow for the international shipment of stock and create a more efficient manufacturing process.

With a haptic touch solution, manufacturers can use less materials by building a keyboard using a seamless plain of material instead of fitting 100 or so keys. It also eliminates the risk of consumers losing or breaking keys, which in turn reduces the rate of keyboard-related device returns and replacements, saving companies money and reducing e-waste.

Enhancing the user experience

Consumers want devices they can make their own. Universal keyboards with haptic touch technology could play a part in this. More than half of the world’s population speak at least two languages, so it is important for companies to address the needs of multilingual individuals. This is particularly important for consumers whose languages use different written structures – Mandarin and English for example. Creating devices that give multilingual consumers the chance to switch quickly between languages on one device can save manufacturers money but open an important new market differentiator to the first mover.

Haptic keyboards can also be created from one single surface with keys etched rather than individual keys. One of the biggest reasons for the failure of a laptop and other consumer devices is liquid ingress. It is too easy to spill a cup of tea or coffee across a laptop keyboard, as consumers are well aware.  But this can render a device useless, causing thousands of pounds worth of damage.  A haptics surface can replicate the feeling of typing individual keys but across an impenetrable surface, removing the risk of liquid ingress.

The significance of making devices different

Creating a device that increases the scope for customisation and personalisation helps consumer electronics designers differentiate models in a crowded market. Haptic touch technology offers infinite opportunities for designers, from the materials that can be used, to the size and placement of trackpads, keyboards and even batteries.

Addressing the challenges of differentiation can help to attend to changing consumer habits. Rather than replacing devices and upgrading to the latest models, there is a significant movement towards purchasing high-quality devices that last longer. Haptic touch offers more versatile and robust solutions for both developers and consumers and has the potential to make consumer electronic devices more customisable, easier to use, cheaper to manufacture, and last longer, significantly reducing the growing e-waste issue.