I bought one of those fancy little HP netbooks this past weekend.  I needed a new laptop and I figured, what the heck.  So anyway, I went to Best Buy and found a nice one and went to pick up the box when I noticed it.  The finish on the box was a nice soft touch coating.  Not sure if you've got any experience with this, but it's a very waxy feeling coating on the paperboard usually applied inline.  We can do UV or aqueous, but most of the soft touch coatings we've done have been aqueous.  Here is the HP carton:

The thing is, I think there is a real trend on within the past year or so to go to a less flashy look, more down to earth, satiny sort of finish.  We're running more satin coatings now then we have in the past.  A lot of the items we've run with the soft touch are consumer electronics packaging.  Maybe it has something to do with the economy, you know, more down to earth, don't flaunt it kind of packaging.  Whatever, the soft touch coating is really a fantastic way to bring more than just a visual aspect to your packaging.  It really brings the sense of touch into play.  Satin is nice too, but for a matte look with a soft feel, soft touch is the way to go.  Here is an example of a package we recently produced that used soft touch aqueous over a nice rich dark brown.  This piece feels great when you pick it up off the shelf:

And here is a piece we did where we did the classic gloss over matte coating for that contrasting effect.  We also foil stamped this with a very striking red and it came out great:

The point is that there are a lot of options beyond gloss out there now, and coating technology has come a long way beyond being just a simple protective overcoat.  You can make your package stand out on the shelf not just visually, but also tactilely.  And anything you can do to set yourself apart on the shelf is something worth investigating.