Who's on first in fingerprint sensing? Startup makes bid

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January 12, 1998, Issue: 988
Section: News

Who's on first in fingerprint sensing? Startup makes bid

Terry Costlow

Irvine, Calif. - A startup in the emerging fingerprint-recognition arena is talking of cracking open the market with sales that could total 35 million units in four years. Who? Vision Systems Inc. has signed a contract to supply its sensor systems to a Taiwanese monitor maker at prices it calls low enough to spark a market upsurge. But others in the fingerprint world question whether the existing infrastructure can support such growth.

Formed last year by defense research house XL Vision (Sebastian, Fla.), Who disclosed a pact last week with Mag Technology Co. Ltd. (Taiwan), which plans to sell millions of the monitors it makes with Who's fingerprint sensor in them. A Mag subsidiary that now makes scanners, Spot Technology Inc., will make the sensors.

Fingerprint sensing has become a hot area, with a number of chip makers entering what they think will be a huge market. The proliferation of digital systems and the increased need for security for Internet commerce and in business environments where critical data is available on nets are fueling the growth. Fingerprints are more secure than passwords or identification numbers.

While there's been a lot of talk about low-cost fingerprint systems for PCs, smart cards and access-control systems, the market remains relatively small.

"They will only produce about 100,000 units this year, since they're building a factory now in Taipei," said Alex Dickinson, chief executive officer at Who. "But over the next four years, Spot plans to sell 35 million. Some of those will be in the Mag monitors, and we're talking very seriously to a major keyboard manufacturer that makes over a million keyboards per month. We feel it's very feasible to total 35 million at the end of four years."

Pricing is the key. Optical systems have been used for years in police work and other high-need environments, but they're considered too pricey for PC and point-of-sale applications. Silicon suppliers including SGS-Thomson, Harris Semiconductor and Lucent spin-off Veridicom are all gearing up to make silicon-based fingerprint sensors that cost much less. But vendors of both silicon-based products and others are largely skeptical of Who's predictions.

Wanted: infrastructure

"An infrastructure still has to be put in place," said a person at a competing fingerprint-sensing company. "If 30 million PCs had these sensors, who would they send the information to? I believe the market will take off, but it will take a few years There's a lot of vaporware out there."

Ed Murrer, director of business development at Veridicom (Santa Clara, Calif.), noted, "The real problem is that even if you introduce a product that sold for $5 today, if there aren't any applications packages, what can you do with it? There has to be a compelling application to drive that kind of volume."

To overcome those infrastructure issues, Who is working with software vendors. It has signed a pact with Entegrity Solutions Corp. (San Jose, Calif.), a specialist in security software. Dickinson noted that agreements with applications-software vendors will be critical, since "there won't be any market for standalone software. It will have to be embedded in something."

Until software emerges, Who will focus on cost.

The actual sensor is a piece of polymer about an inch square, large enough for the average fingertip. An electric charge is run through this material, which is being patented, so that when a human finger presses on it, capacitive coupling stimulates light output on the other side.

"There is a conversion from the electrical field on one side to optical on the other," said Dickinson, who helped develop the Veridicom chips while at Lucent. "We take the optical image and pass it through a lens that costs less than $1. It's focused down to a small piece of silicon that is our sensor."

That the silicon is much smaller than the polymer is a key reason that Who's product will cost less than silicon sensors in which fingers are placed on a chip that's about the size of Who's polymer.

"The cost driver of this is the silicon," Dickinson said. "Our components probably only cost around $5, so our selling price can be about $10, though that is a couple of years out."

Spot will make modules that can be adopted to monitors, keyboards and other products. Though he predicted keyboards would be the biggest application, Dickinson thinks monitors may be the driving application.

Dickinson noted that the sensor, called TactileSense, is not easy to fool. One of the potential problems of fingerprint sensors is the possibility that a molded finger can be put on the sensors and a match can be faked.

"We acquire the fingerprint using capacitance, so it's very easy to distinguish between plastic and a human finger," he said.

Once data is gathered, it will be encrypted. Since the fingerprint will be digitized to a few words or characters to create a digital signature, encryption will be needed to prevent theft.