We have been seeing a lot of things being foretold. The idea that wearable tech will be a $19 billion market, and we also have the idea that we will see robots delivering packages in self driving cars. Now we have the idea that the fingerprint will be the mainstream unlocking tool.
We saw the first smartphone to have fingerprint unlocking integrated into it with the release of the iPhone 5s back in September. The fingerprint technology integrated into the iPhone was created by a company called AuthenTec, which you may have guessed, is just an extension of Apple themselves. Now there is another company entering the limelight, well at least they hope to, that company is called Fingerprint Card.
Fingerprint Card is a Swedish company and is already on track to sell some of its lower end swipe technology to Fujitsu among others. The trend for fingerprint companies seems to be sold off and cash in. We already know that AuthenTec was acquired by Apple, but another company was sold to Synaptics, and they were called Validity.
So it is only natural for Fingerprint to hope for similar fates as their competition. The forecast came from Fingerprints CEO Johan Carlstrom, during an interview to Reuters. Carlstrom foretold that “…at least seven or eight [companies] will launch a phone with a touch sensor is 2014.”
Carlstrom is pulling for Samsung to purchase their sensors for phones to be released in 2014. Though Carlstrom mentioned other companies as well such as LG and Huawei. Carlstrom did give reason for Samsung being the main goal, ” Samsung is well-known for having multiple suppliers for most components…” and with the release of their new scanner that is Android and Windows capable, they see a bright future for their scanners.
The new builds allows them to forecast not only a $77 million increase in revenue for the year 2014, but to also see a 60% hold on the market in mobile technology. This all makes quite a bit of sense when you look at Android and how it dominates the smart phone market currently, not to mention competition is pretty slim at the moment for Fingerprint.
According to Carlstrom, the reason for the increase in popularity for fingerprint scanning technology in our mobile devices is due to Apple. When Apple integrated the tech into their iPhone 5s, they bought AuthenTec for $356 million. “It was an industry breakthrough and certainly opens the floodgates and starts a new industry.” Carlstrom stated. Though, we may think otherwise, since Android has yet to release a well received fingerprint scanner smart phone.
The final statements Carlstrom had were surrounding the possibility of a complete sale of the company. He is so confident that the mobile industry is just getting started with fingerprint technology, that he is not willing to sell just yet, “We have no intention to sell at the current time, and at current valuations.”
So what do you have to say about the fingerprint scanner, is Carlstrom correct in assuming this year we will see a huge increase in the sales of scanner technology? Or are we still concerned about big brother grabbing our info?