Portfolio crashing? Buy shares in touchscreens!

There’s one market that isn’t crashing this week: touchscreens. The credit crunch isn’t even denting sales. In fact, experts predict sales will double within five years, fuelled by the latest mobiles and other gadgets.

On Wednesday RIM announced the world’s first touchscreen BlackBerry, the Storm. Last week Nokia announced its first touchscreen handset, the 5800 XpressMusic. Samsung’s new SCH-W570 and SPH-W5700 each boast not one but two touchscreens.

And then there’s this little thing you might have heard of: the iPhone 3G. Apple’s new touchscreen baby hit its 2008 sales target of 10 million handsets this week, three months early.

Research firm iSuppli says 341 million touchscreens will sell worldwide this year, worth $3.4m. It predicts this will rise to 833 million units ($6.4m) by 2013. That’s five years of massive growth. You’ll soon have a touchscreen in your underpants.

And the signs are that the analysts are right. It’s as if the credit crunch wasn’t happening. Mobiles – which as we all know are the mayflies of the tech world, binned after one short year of existence – are still being snapped up by shoppers… who then have to live on half-price pasties from Aldi so they can afford their monthly contracts.

Want to beat the coming recession? Invest in touchscreen manufacturers. Or pasty factories.

Will your telly (or indeed your underpants) have a touchscreen before the decade’s out? Give us your predictions – and stock market picks – in the comments box below.

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