Tag: controls

Touchscreen prices are falling

Posted on September 30, 2015 by - News

fingerprintPrices for smartphone-use touchscreen controller ICs have been falling thanks to an increase in the numbers of suppliers and a price war.

Digitimes  claims that touchscreen controller and fingerprint sensor bundle suppliers have been vying for more orders from brand-name smartphone vendors and this has caused the prices to fall lower.

Prices for high-end 10-finger solutions have already fallen below $1, while prices for 2-finger ones for entry-level smartphones have dropped to $0.20-0.30.

Synaptics, Elan, FocalTech and Goodix offer both touchscreen controllers and fingerprint sensors.
Touchscreens sized 19-inch and above have reached a new all-time low of US$4 recently from more than US$5 due to an increasing number of suppliers in the market.

Interactive whiteboards, all-in-one computers and industrial electronics, is where the cheaper screens are headed and these markets are experiencing a bit of a boom.

Prices for touchscreen controllers for large-size applications are expected to go even lower in the next few months.

Cops want “hands on” policing of the internet

Posted on September 29, 2014 by - News

1408707700441_wps_2_FILM_Carry_On_Constable_1London coppers have called for more state controls of the world wide web to prevent internet anarchy.

The City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit is a taxpayer funded security force for private companies who want to protect their content without having to spend too much.

According to PIPCU head Andy Fyfe, despite some successes,  more state interference may be needed to stop internet anarchy.

The unit uses a wide range of strategies, from writing to domain registrars and threatening them, to working with advertisers in order to cut off revenues from ‘pirate’ sites.

But Fyfe also believes that the Government may have to tighten the rules on the internet, to stop people from breaking the law.

He said he was interested in having a debate in the media about how much policing of the internet people want. At the moment, he does not see any regulation and or policing of the internet.

PIPCU’s chief believes that the public has to be protected from criminals including pirate site operators who take advantage of their trust.

He thinks that if things go wrong, the Internet becomes completely ungovernable, no one will dare operate on it at all.

“So should there be a certain level of … state inference in the interest of protecting consumers? I’m very keen to raise that as a debate,” Fyfe notes.

Tighter rules may be needed to prevent people from breaking the law in the future. This could mean that not everyone is allowed to launch a website, but that a license would be required, for example.

Fyfe  predicts that eventually the government will decide that it has had enough and it’s not getting enough help from those main companies that control the way we use the internet. Then it will imposing regulations, imposing a code of conduct about the way people may be allowed to operated on the internet.