Fingerprint Cards Reaches Mobile Milestone

Fingerprint Cards (FPC) is celebrating another major milestone after announcing that its biometric technology has now been featured in 500 different smartphone models. The news comes a little over a year after the company passed the 400-model threshold, which it did in November of 2019.

The jump from 400 to 500 took slightly less time than the jump from 300 to 400, which suggests that the rate of integration is increasing. According to FPC, the top 10 Android device manufacturers placed fingerprint sensors in more than 60 percent of the smartphone models that they released in 2020, a number that is up from the comparable figure for the previous year. The company reached its 300^th phone almost exactly three years ago, in January of 2018. 

FPC’s technology has appeared in nine of the top ten smartphone brands, while 80 percent of all smartphones now come with some kind of biometric feature, though that figure presumably includes phones that only support facial recognition. Either way, FPC believes that the trend will continue, and that more and more phones will have biometric capabilities moving forward.

“This is a significant milestone for Fingerprints and a marker for the biometrics industry, as biometrics is now a natural and trusted technology for many of us,” said FPC Mobile Business Line SVP Ted Hansson. “Our capacitive fingerprint sensors continue to gain momentum in the smartphone market, where our trusted solutions are enabling innovation and differentiation for mobile OEMs.”

FPC had shipped more than 1 billion individual sensors as of May of 2019. Vinsmart deployed the company’s FPC1540 fingerprint sensor in its Vsmart Aris and Vsmart Aris Pro smartphones in September, while FPC released an updated version of the side-mounted sensor in November. The first phones with the FPC1542 are expected to hit the market in early 2021.

(Originally posted on Mobile ID World)