FPC to pursue enterprise PC market with match-in-sensor biometrics approval

The fingerprint sensor for personal computers with biometric matching on-chip made by Fingerprint Cards has been added to Microsoft’s approved vendor list (AVL) for Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-in Security, opening up the business PC market to FPC.

Fingerprint Cards already supplies biometric sensors for three of the world’s five largest PC manufacturers, and has announced PC partnerships with Dell, Honor, Huawei and Xiaomi, and the company says it expects to be able to reveal more customers in the near future. The first volume orders for Fingerprint Cards’ PC solutions were placed in 2021.

All Fingerprint Cards biometric solutions are compliant with Windows Hello, a company representative confirmed to Biometric Update in an email. Only solutions supporting match-on-chip processing are eligible for inclusion on the AVL for Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-in Security.

“In consumer PCs, biometric authentication is usually executed in the computer’s CPU (so-called Match-on-Host),” comments Ted Hansson, president of Mobile, PC & Access China, in the announcement. “In the Enterprise PC segment, it is much more common to use Match-on-Chip, where the biometric data is stored on a separate chip, providing an even higher level of security. Match-on-Chip fingerprint solutions command a higher average selling price (ASP) and currently account for approximately half of the market and growing.”

Fingerprint Cards CEO Christian Fredrikson told Biometric Update in an interview earlier this year that the PC segment, now served by the Shanghai-based Fingerprint Technology Company (FPC), consists of around 20 percent of a total of 300 to 350 million units sold each year.

“The PC models launched to date with Fingerprints’ biometric PC solution are mainly consumer PCs,” the company representative wrote in the email. “However, in the medium- to long term, we expect the split between consumer and enterprise PC models in our business mix to be about 50/50.”

Article Topics

biometric matching  |  biometrics  |  enterprise  |  Fingerprint Cards  |  fingerprint sensors  |  Microsoft  |  pc  |  Windows Hello