Face ID Supplier AMS Announces Another Partnership with an Apple Rival

“AMS’s solutions portfolio includes Time-of-Flight, CMOS, optical sensor, IR pattern, and VCSEL technologies, with the latter two being key focus areas in a collaborative partnership with Qualcomm announced last autumn.”

Austria-based sensor specialist AMS has entered into another partnership aimed at delivering 3D facial recognition technology to more mobile devices beyond the Apple ecosystem.

The company’s new partner is Face++, a China-based biometric software provider focused on facial recognition. The collaboration will see the latter’s technology used to process data from AMS’s sensors.

AMS’s solutions portfolio includes Time-of-Flight, CMOS, optical sensor, IR pattern, and VCSEL technologies, with the latter two being key focus areas in a collaborative partnership with Qualcomm announced last autumn. That partnership, too, was aimed at developing 3D imaging technology for mobile devices.

As Reuters reports, AMS has provided optical sensor technology to Apple for use in the Face ID biometric authentication system of its latest iPhones, but has suffered from lower-than-expected sales of such devices in China in particular. Its partnerships with Qualcomm and now Face++ are aimed at bringing its technology to rival smartphones based on Windows and Android operating systems, with Apple’s competitors seeking to develop their own sophisticated face-scanning smartphones in the wake of the iPhone X and its follow-up devices.

Source: Reuters

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January 7, 2019 – by Alex Perala