Microsoft investing in Multitouch company N-trig

Microsoft is learnt to have been investing in a multi-touch technology company called N-trig, based in Israel.  N-trig’s technology enabled computers are supposed to accept inputs from a touch pen or a finger.  It is also expected to support multitouch, simultaneously recognizing contact from multiple fingers, enabling gestures such as “pinching” to reduce the size of an image on a screen, for example. N-trig’s technology has been used in Dell’s Latitude XT and Hewlett-Packard’s TouchSmart tx2.

According to a report published in PC World, the software giant is supposedly investing US$24 million in N-trig. Interestingly during the CES 2009 key note speech, Steve Ballmer of Microsoft announced that Windows 7, the next version of Windows, has a lot of features to support touch screens and pads.  In the wake of this news, Microsoft’s investment in N-trig appears to be in line with its strategy of targeting the touch screen technology in a large scale.

Other investors in the Israeli company N-trig include Aurum Ventures, Challenger, Canaan Partners and Evergreen Partners.