Logitech Celebrates Its One Billionth Mouse But The Party Might End Soon

Dec. 5, 2008— -- At the dawn of the new era of user interfaces that is bound to end the reign of the mighty computer mouse, Logitech is celebrating the production of its one billionth mouse.

According to the company, the lucky legacy mouse was built a couple of weeks ago at one of the company plants in Suzhou, in western China.

Founded in 1981 in Switzerland, Logitech introduced its first mouse for retail four years later in 1985. It took the company 11 years to reach 100 million against heavy competition from IBM, Microsoft, and Apple, and almost just as long to multiply tenfold.

Matching that level of growth over the next eleven years will be much harder. If you look at where computer interfaces are headed over the next few years, it's very likely that Logitech's mice brigade might not make it.

As we mentioned in a story about the coming death of the mouse earlier this year, the increasing quality and accuracy of interactive UIs and motion detectors are poised to kick out the mouse out of the mainstream and into the Senior House of Gadgets over the next decade.

Among the other technologies that will emerge as viable computer input devices, we expect to see eye-tracking software, realistic force-feedback technology, voice commands, and everyone's favorite, Minority Report-style gesture recognition.

But since it's bad form to spoil a party, we should note that Logitech is building a nice little contest around their event. The company is giving out a $1,000 reward to whoever guesses where the billionth mouse ends up around the world, after tracking its whereabouts through its own blog and twit feed.

Facing its inevitable death sentence, you can't blame the poor mouse for stealing this idea from the Mars Landing.

Check out the full line of Logitech mice over the years at the company'sFlickr page.