Apple’s introduction of Face ID on its new iPhone X smartphone is “another sign of the speed of innovation when it comes to biometrics,” but the future is multimodal, writes Fingerprint Cards CTO Pontus Jägemalm on his company’s inaugural blog post.
Noting that the fingerprint biometrics specialist acquired iris recognition solutions provider Delta ID earlier this year, Jägemalm asserts that FPC’s leadership believes that going forward, “the market for biometric identity verification will not be about one technology that beats all of the others, but rather that several technologies will integrate with each other depending on the application and specific use.” Jägemalm goes on to point out that Delta ID’s technology is “one of the few certified and directly targeted towards Aadhaar,” India’s pioneering biometric ID program, which could ultimately allow FPC to target its fingerprint and iris scanning multimodal solutions to a huge market.
Of course, while Apple has so far eschewed multimodality on its new devices, other major smartphone makers are already embracing it. LG’s new V30 device, for example, supports facial, voice, and fingerprint recognition; and Samsung’s latest smartphones combine iris, facial, and fingerprint recognition. Even Apple’s decision to focus exclusively on facial recognition for the iPhone X appears to have been borne of necessity, with the company widely thought to have failed in a strenuous effort to integrate Touch ID directly into the display of the device.
There’s still a chance, then, that Apple will combine Touch ID and Face ID in a future device, especially if Samsung succeeds in bringing in-display fingerprint recognition to its next iris-scanning smartphone; and that all points toward an increasingly multimodal future for electronic devices.
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September 13, 2017 – by Alex Perala
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