Touchscreens, facial recognition systems, and gesture-based interfaces could spell the end of the humble computer mouse sooner than you might think, or so a Gartner analyst predicts. Mouse manufacturers (not to mention millions of desktop users) beg to differ.

Analyst Steve Prentice told BBC News that while the "mouse works fine in the desktop environment ... for home entertainment or working on a notebook, it's over."

That's a bold statement, given that the mouse-cursor combo has been making our lives easier for decades (the mouse itself was invented nearly 40 years ago)—and when it comes to a desktop PC, a mouse (as Prentice admits) does, indeed, work "fine."

But the Gartner analysts points to the popularity of the gesture-based Wiimote, the iPhone's touchscreen UI and tilt-sensitive accelerometers, and even the wireless axe in Guitar Hero as evidence that consumers are moving beyond the mouse.

Now, Prentice doesn't go so far as to kiss off the venerable keyboard, too. "For all its faults, the keyboard will remain the primary text input device," he told the BBC. Thank goodness for that.

However, "the idea of a keyboard with a mouse as a control interface is the paradigm that I am talking about breaking down," Prentice said.

Just tell that to mouse maker Logitech. "The death of the mouse is greatly exaggerated," a Logitech exec told the BBC, adding that the company has sold a whopping 500 million mice in the past two decades.

What do you think? Would you ever ditch your mouse for, say, a touch-sensitive PC monitor, or Minority Report-level gesture tech? Or will they have to pry your mouse from your cold, dead fingers?

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Say goodbye to the computer mouse [BBC News]