How far is fingerprinting from the standard?

Fingerprint recognition market, smart phone standard, fingerprint identification industry chain

In 2015, the domestic smart phone fingerprint recognition market is also expected to reach a scale of RMB 3-5 billion. Such a large market gap will undoubtedly prompt a large number of industrial chain manufacturers to join the field of fingerprint identification. According to industry sources, the price of a fingerprint sensor is likely to drop below $5 this year. What's more, the price of a sliding fingerprint sensor is already under 2. The hunger and thirst of fingerprint recognition technology made by domestic mobile phone brands inspired the passion of the touch industry chain...

The enthusiasm of the smart phone manufacturers for fingerprint recognition continues to heat up. Although domestic mobile phones have already been technically not far from Apple, it will take some time before fingerprint identification becomes the standard for mobile phones. Recalling 2014, it is undoubtedly the year of smartphone fingerprint recognition technology.

On the one hand, OPPO N3, Meizu MX4 Pro, Huawei Mate7 and other domestic flagship models have used fingerprint identification technology, the emergence of fingerprint recognition technology to ease the bottleneck encountered by handset manufacturers in the hardware design; the other hand, the domestic fingerprint Identifying the industry chain is accelerating and it also brings new investment opportunities for the industry chain manufacturers.

So how long does it take for a fingerprint recognition technology to become a smartphone specimen from an industry perspective?

Industry alliances and standards have been formed

For any technology to be widely used in the industry chain, standardization is a must. For example, the USB interface, mobile phone charger interface, HTML5, and so on have all undergone standardization and unification. The formation of alliances is a powerful driving force for the unified standards of the industry chain.

So, is there any alliance in fingerprint recognition technology?

Reviewing the application of fingerprint recognition technology in smart phones, in 2013, Apple released the iPhone 5S for the first time using fingerprint recognition technology, becoming the first company to eat crabs, followed by domestic and foreign mobile phone manufacturers such as Samsung and Huawei. Apple's Touch ID fingerprinting technology is provided by its AuthenTec company, but because only Apple can use its own, leading the Android camp manufacturers had to explore their own way forward.

Fingerprint identification technology is a very complex system engineering, and the industrial chain involved is also more complicated: fingerprint identification chip manufacturers, mobile phone manufacturers, fingerprint identification module manufacturers, program providers that convert fingerprints into codes to implement the authentication process, and There are software applications similar to Alipay's technology. For a general chip vendor, module manufacturer or software integrator, this is a high-threshold system-challenging project. It is difficult to construct a complete solution without a solid software and hardware infrastructure. In addition, enterprises involved in patent protection are all on their own, which also results in the lack of industry standards.

In fact, as early as July 2012, 48 technology companies including Google, Microsoft, PayPal, Intel, ARM, Samsung, and Lenovo established the FIDO Alliance (Fast IDentity Online), the online fast authentication alliance. Members of the FIDO Alliance will assist in defining market requirements and contribute to the FIDO Open Agreement. The agreement is the first open industry standard for online and digital verification, which will increase security, privacy and simplify the user experience, and FingerQ will play an active role in promoting the development of industry standards.

It is understood that this plan has cost millions of dollars over several years, of which Samsung's Galaxy S5 is the first fingerprint-recognition smartphone with FIDO specifications. Unlike Apple's Touch ID closure, FIDO is an open source alliance, and as long as it adheres to the standards of the Alliance, whether it is a handset manufacturer, a chip maker or a technical service provider, or an Internet company can join.

Domestic fingerprint identification industry chain started

The emergence of the FIDO alliance can, to a certain extent, clear the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain and form a unified industry standard, which has, to a certain extent, promoted the development of fingerprint identification technology.

At present, domestic related manufacturers have entered the field one after another. Touch-control chip manufacturers such as Huiding, Si Liwei, and BYD have all deployed fingerprint identification chips. Among them, Huiding Technology also shifted the original touch chip business to fingerprint identification technology this year, and released the first domestic press-type capacitive touch fingerprint identification chip. It is understood that Meizu's MX4 Pro's front press fingerprint recognition technology is the use of Huiding technology program. Some touch screen and camera module manufacturers have also begun to join the ranks of fingerprint recognition modules. For example, Ophelia invested 200 million in Nanchang to conduct research and development and production of fingerprint recognition modules last year.

At present, the global fingerprint recognition market is dominated by Korean manufacturers, including Crucialtec, which is the world's largest supplier of fingerprint recognition modules. The addition of domestic industry chain vendors will hopefully break the status quo of Korean-based manufacturers in the fingerprint recognition market.

However, the domestic fingerprint identification industry chain has just started and is not perfect.

First of all, the cost is high and suppliers are insufficient. At present, there are few fingerprint identification module suppliers in China, and with the strong demand from brand manufacturers, Luoyang Paper has become the most expensive one. According to the author's understanding from the industry, the current domestic fingerprint identification module offer up to 11-12 US dollars / support, this price and Apple's fingerprint identification module unit price. Once introduced into production, the overall manufacturing cost will be significantly increased. Therefore, only some flagship models currently use fingerprint recognition technology.

In addition, although the FIDO alliance has been formed in the world, it is virtually useless to domestic small supply chain suppliers. The domestic fingerprint identification technology still lacks a unified standard, which is reflected in the realization of security, module assembly processes, etc. The difference between different manufacturers is very large.

Therefore, from the perspective of the industry chain, fingerprint identification technology must become standard at least until the industrial chain is fully mature. In order to form a large-scale standardized production of fingerprint identification modules, the cost must also be greatly reduced, so that it can become a standardized device like a camera or a touch screen. The author believes that this time may have to wait until 2017.

Will also face two major problems of security and application

However, in addition to production, cost, and other manufacturing issues, fingerprint identification technology will have to face two problems in its popularity: lack of information security and application.

Security has always been the biggest problem plaguing fingerprint identification technology. The so-called most secure Apple Touch ID was attacked by hackers on the day it was launched, but at the time it was cheat to copy fingerprints. It is understood that the latest generation of fingerprint recognition technology has a bioelectrical recognition function, and that copying a finger or a broken finger will fail to identify it.

In order to solve the security problem, many fingerprint authentication solution providers have also introduced software solutions. The general fingerprint authentication process is that the sensor compares the fingerprint to the key and the local fingerprint data of the mobile phone to make a recognition judgment. Some vendors upload local fingerprint data to the cloud. Once the server is attacked, it will lead to security accidents. At present, most of the solutions are to store the fingerprint data in an independent "black box", which is isolated from the main operating system. Even if the mobile phone poisoning data is not read by the outside world. Meizu MX4 Pro is taking this approach, opened up a separate Trust zone in the mobile phone storage, effectively preventing data from being read by the outside world.

In addition, the relative lack of application is also a problem that hinders the development of fingerprint recognition for smartphones. For most iPhone users, the current fingerprint recognition function is mainly used to "unlock". Last year, Apple launched Apple Pay, fingerprint recognition has more payment functions. Domestic manufacturers, including Huawei Mate7 and Alipay wallet, launched a payment plan, and Meizu also announced that it will cooperate with Alipay and Wechat to develop an M-Pay payment plan. In the future, mobile payment may become the main purpose of fingerprint identification in the future.