Despite its massive recall, Samsung’s Galaxy Note7 smartphone could help to pioneer the next wave in mobile biometrics—iris scanning. That’s a potential implication of a new forecast from ABI Research.
Citing the high-profile Note7, the firm predicts that in 2o21, the number of smartphones shipping with iris scanning technology will come to nearly 300 million. Explaining the modality’s predicted rise in popularity, Senior Analyst Marina Lu said “the iris is an unchanging, protected, and completely unique feature of the human body,” and thus a particularly reliable biometric.
The firm points out that other major brands, including Microsoft, ZTE, HP, and starting with Fujitsu and NTT Docomo, have also launched their own iris scanning smartphones. But the Note7 is perhaps the highest-profile instance yet, and other smartphone companies “are watching the market response to iris scanning and are likely to follow Samsung, the world’s largest smartphone vendor, to adopt iris scanning technologies.”
And just as Apple used its own pioneering fingerprint scanning system to help encourage users to try out mobile payments, Samsung’s iris scanning “will help drive future mobile payment adoption,” says Lu, since many users are still hesitant to try mPayments due to security concerns. That will be good news for Samsung Pay, and other mPayment platforms can benefit too as more smartphone OEMs adopt iris scanning technology.
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September 21, 2016 – by Alex Perala
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