Fingerprint Cards gets mobile phone design win for area sensor

Fingerprint Cards (FPC) has won its first mobile phone design win for its FPC1080A swipe sensor from one of China’s most prominent mobile phone design houses.

According to the company, the design house is providing its solution to multiple Chinese brands and manufacturers and ramp-up is expected in 2013. This particular, unnamed design house has sold 30 million mobile phones in 2011 and FPC sees a very large potential working with them in the near future.

The FPC1080A is a compact CMOS fingerprint swipe sensor aimed at the mobile device market, boasting low power consumption and support for regular image capture, and also for automatic finger detection mechanisms. This unit delivers 3D image quality, with 508 dpi high resolution and 256 grey scales in every pixel.

The hardware porting is already in place and software porting on the MediaTek’s Dual Core 3G/HSPA Android platform, MTK6577, is ongoing. Due to the prevailing competitive situation, the mobile phone design house wants to remain anonymous for the time being.

“China is the world’s largest market for smartphones, with forecasted sales volume of 430 million in 2013. Chinese brands already account for market share of more than 50%. This porting on the popular MediaTek Android Smartphone platform facilitates additional design wins on the same platform in China,” Johan Carlstrom, President and CEO of FPC said. “We opened our sales and support office in Greater China in September 2012 and we are delighted to already announce this major design win and success in the extremely important Chinese market. Due to our world-leading capacitive fingerprint technology, image quality and power consumption, FPC now is established as the leading alternative for fingerprint sensors in smartphones and tablets. We expect a number of additional design wins in the booming China market during the months ahead.

FPC has had a busy few months. As reported previously in BiometricUpdate.com, FPC and CrucialTec signed a significant three-year supply agreement and amendment to their existing Joint Development & Production Agreement for the production of the Biometric Track Pad.

Likewise, in November, FPC received a massive order from a Chinese distributor for its FPC1011F3 area sensor, worth US$2.9 million.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  design win  |  fingerprint  |  fingerprint verification  |  mobile  |  smartphones