SANTA CLARA, CALIF. — The first of the so-called Google phones is controlled using a method that's finally gaining momentum in mobile computing: swiping a finger across the screen.
The touch sensors in T-Mobile's G1 phone, which hits the market Oct. 23, are made by Synaptics Inc., a little-known but influential Silicon Valley company co-founded in 1986 by a Caltech professor.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Friday, October 03, 2008 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 29 words Type of Material: Correction
Touch screens: An article in Wednesday's Business section about touch screens in cellphones said T-Mobile's G1 phone would hit the market Oct. 23. It goes on sale Oct. 22.
For the two decades since, Synaptics has championed the use of the finger as a navigation tool for computers. It develops many of the sensors behind laptop touch pads, digital media players and high-end remote controls.
But touch screens were rarely seen in cellphones -- that is, until Apple Inc.'s iPhone hit the market in June 2007.
The Apple device lets users scroll through pages of text or photos and type on an on-screen keyboard with one finger, or expand or shrink files with two fingers.
Analysts who have taken apart the iPhone don't think Synaptics' technology powers the innovative touch screen. Apple and Synaptics won't say. But the device's growing popularity helped Synaptics' mission of bringing touch screens to the mainstream.
Over the last six months, the firm has launched four phones with its touch-screen technology. And another prominent one is coming soon: The T-Mobile G1, which is made by HTC Corp. and runs Google Inc.'s Android operating system for mobile phones.
Putting touch technology on cellphones wasn't widely embraced at first. That has all changed, said Andrew Hsu, a product marketing manager at the company, adding that Synaptics no longer has to sell hardware manufacturers on the value of incorporating a touch screen.
The number of cellphones with touch screens is expected to triple by 2010, to 362 million from 120 million last year, research firm ISuppli Corp. said. In comparison, cellphones without touch screens are expected to increase by only 6%, to 1.12 billion from 1.05 billion.
Synaptics is hiring accordingly. The company has added 120 people since the beginning of the year to bring the total to 443, with new employees working on a variety of products, including mobile phones. Half the employees have an engineering background.
The company was co-founded by Carver Mead, a professor emeritus at Caltech, and Federico Faggin, a former Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel Corp. engineer who worked on the design of the first microprocessor.
