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The future of the touchscreen phone is the story of dramatically growing demand. IMS Research forecasts sales of 230 million touch-screen handsets by 2012, up from 30 million in 2007.Here’s what’s happening.

First, more manufacturers getting onboard. Second, touch-screens are showing up on more types of devices, not just smartphones.

Nokia will soon launch a mass appeal touch-screen phone.

The thirst for touch-screens is strong. Samsung’s Instinct is a hit. Sprint says the Samsung Instinct is its best-selling EV-DO device ever.

LG sold seven million touch-screen devices in July.

Apple sold a million new 3G iPhones a day the first three days of release. And not surprising, it is the parade of manufacturers following Apple’s lead that is manoeuvring to tap into the touch-screen demand.

As IMS Research analyst Femi Omoni puts it..

“The original iPhone was the catalyst that created this huge market interest in touchscreen phones. The fact that it was not only popular with consumers, but also helped drive data revenues proved how important touchscreen handsets can be. Now all of the network operators and handset manufacturers want a piece of the pie.”

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Dell’s DJ Ditty music player was a celebrated catastrophe when it made its debut five years ago.

Our friends at Dell have probably learned a few lessons from the ill-fated DJ Ditty and are apparently prepared to once again take on Apple’s iPod.

Look for a new digital music player from Dell. It has been testing a device which uses Wi-fi to connect with a number of online music services, and can be tehered to a PC.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

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Suggested retail for the Sony BDP-S350 Blu-ray player is $399. A cheaper version will be sold at Costco.

The new Sony Blu-ray player is smaller and more energy efficient than previous models.

Boot up time is quicker. Upgrade to BD live will be available.

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Overall, the Samsung Instinct is a fine phone. Its CNET Editor’s rating is a solid 8.2.

But if you are considering the Samsung Instinct, keep in mind that the call quality is not that great.A few other shortcomings to keep in mind…

• No Wi-Fi

• No photo editing

• Clunky browser

• No Instant Messaging

• Not much internal memory

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Home servers aren’t in many homes right now. But that’s about to change. More and more of us want/need to be living living in the terabyte world.

Digital media is moving off desk tops, note books and their external drives onto servers which work as a hub for entertainment content.

Why isn’t the external drive doing the job of the central hub?

When hard drives crash, and they’re more likely to crash on desktops than on servers. Syncing is also often tough.

And storage. Our appetites are growing. By 2010, the average user will have two terabytes of content. Video fuels our thirst.

Look for a growing number of home server options to be rolling out. And look for our interest in hooking up a central hub to really take off when devices such as LCDs, audio systems, and set-top boxes bake in server-like functionality.

But things are happening already.

Microsoft launched Windows Home Server Software seven months ago.

Hewlett-Packard is looking for early adopters to use its Media-Smart servers.

The European household seems to be gravitating toward servers more quickly than the American household. Fujitsu Siemens and La Cie are leading the way.

Seagate’s Mirra and Apple’s Time Capsule are available in the U.S.

The Sony HES-V1000 offers 500 GB of storage with 200-disc Blu-ray DVD changer; it is compatible with PlayStation3 and Sony TVs with the XrossMediaBar. This is an onscreen menu that offers access to content from home networked devices.

On the smaller side of home servers, Harman Kardon’s DMC 100 Digital Media Center delivers 250 GB of storage and handles four streams of music.

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