Microsoft is signalling the end of the mouse with its latest operating system, which aims to build on the success of its rival Apple's iPhone touch screen.

Windows 7 will allow PC users to touch, rather than point and click, in a move which indicates that the world’s most influential software company believes that the days of the keyboard-mouse combination are coming to an end. But some critics claim that Microsoft is a long way from replacing what has been the dominant human-computer interface since its invention by Xerox researchers in the 1970s.

It is unclear how willing office workers or home users are to abandon hard-won typing skills and lean forward to start manipulating images on a large computer screen.

Windows 7 — which is not due to be released until 2010 — represents the latest in a long line of attempts by Microsoft to catch up with the technical lead established by Apple — though the software giant usually overhauls its rival in the end.

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“The way you interact with the system will change dramatically,” Bill Gates, Microsoft’s billionaire chairman, said at a conference in California this week. “Today, almost all the interaction is keyboard-mouse.” He indicated that he expected users to talk and use a pen to interact with their computers as well as caress them.

But Roberta Cozza, an analyst at Gartner, said: “With mobiles, which you hold in your hand, touch can make things easier — you get to the phone’s functions faster, whereas with a PC you’d have to lift your arm every time, and with a screen that’s 17 inches wide that’s going to become more difficult.”

Although Microsoft is loath publicly to acknowledge the success of its competitors, except when it is trying to buy them, it is clearly worried about the popularity of the touch-screen interface on a string of handheld devices, ranging from sat-navs to iPhones. A touch-screen BlackBerry is expected this year.

“Touch-enabled surfaces are popping up everywhere, including cellphones, remote controls, GPS devices, and more,” Chris Flores, a director on the Windows Client team at Microsoft, said.

Microsoft is in need of a lift after the success of the Apple iPod and other handheld technologies, the losing battle that it continues to fight with Google over control of the internet, and the lacklustre release of Vista, the operating system released last year.

Nevertheless, Windows remains the dominant desktop computer standard, and Microsoft could not resist a swipe at its rival.

Asked whether Microsoft or Apple would be first to market with touchscreen computer software for desktop computers, Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, suggested that the two companies were not in direct competition.

“We’ll sell 290 million PCs, and Apple will sell 10 million PCs. Steve [Jobs, Apple's chief executive] can flip his hand and sell a few models — they’re fantastically successful and so are we, but it’s a different job.”

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