News

Microsoft Invests in Touch

Microsoft is the key investor in the latest round of funding to N-trig, a supplier of digitizers and software that enable touch-based computing.

N-trig, an Israel-based company with a U.S. office in Austin, Texas, today announced it has received $24 million from Aurum Ventures, Challenger Ltd., Canaan Partners, Evergreen Venture Partners and Microsoft. While N-trig is not providing a breakdown of the financing, Microsoft is leading the investment, according to an N-trig spokeswoman.

Microsoft's investment in N-trig is noteworthy because the company is a key provider of the touch technology used in numerous tablet PCs and recent touch-enabled computers, such as Dell's Latitude XT and Hewlett-Packard's TouchSmart tx2. Microsoft has also been talking up the touch capabilities in its forthcoming Windows 7 operating system, which was released for beta testing last week.

N-trig demonstrated its DuoSense technology on the pre-beta release of Windows 7 at the recent Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC). The digitizer will provide a data stream based on the Windows 7 architecture, said Lenny Engelhardt, vice president of business development, in an interview in November.

"Microsoft came to us early on and said, 'Look, we want to allow, in Windows 7, true multi-touch from the operating system level,'" Engelhardt said.

While there is no shortage of skepticism over whether touch will become anything more than a niche market, Englehardt believes the release of Windows 7 will give it broader appeal. That said, he admitted, "I don't think the mouse will disappear."

About the Author

Jeffrey Schwartz is editor of Redmond magazine and also covers cloud computing for Virtualization Review's Cloud Report. In addition, he writes the Channeling the Cloud column for Redmond Channel Partner. Follow him on Twitter @JeffreySchwartz.

Featured

  • IBM Giving Orgs a Governance Lifeline in Agentic AI Era

    Nearly overnight, organizations are facing brand-new challenges caused by self-directed AI systems (a.k.a. agentic AI). Big Blue is extending them some help.

  • Microsoft Launches Integrated E-mail Security Ecosystem for Defender for Office 365

    Microsoft is expanding its e-mail security capabilities with the launch of a new Integrated Cloud Email Security (ICES) ecosystem for Microsoft Defender for Office 365.

  • Microsoft Joins Workday's AI Agent Partner Network

    Microsoft has become a key partner in Workday's newly launched AI Agent Partner Network, aligning with other industry leaders to integrate AI agents into enterprise workforce systems.

  • LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky To Lead Microsoft's Productivity Initiatives

    In a strategic leadership realignment, Microsoft has appointed LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky to oversee its consumer and small business productivity software division, encompassing Microsoft 365, Teams and AI-driven tools like Copilot.