À̹ÌÁö È®´ë Dongbu HiTek, a South Korean foundry company, will provide fingerprint recognition sensors to BYD, a Chinese electronic vehicle manufacturer, expanding its biometric product lineup to mobile devices beyond home security products like door locks, according to a source on Sunday.
Dongbu HiTek recently advanced its processing technology to produce fingerprint sensing chips with improved recognition accuracy and reduced errors, which are applicable to more sophisticated devices like smartphones.
With the development, the company now joins the ranks of the world¡¯s leading manufacturers of fingerprint recognition sensors in Japan, the U.S. and Taiwan. In Korea, Kosdaq-listed Crucial Tec has developed and exported fingerprint recognition sensors.
As a foundry company, Dongbu HiTek receives design drawings from fabless companies and produces computer chips on their behalf. The company expects to generate more leads in its fingerprint recognition products when it further meets cost-cutting targets in foundry business, creating another cash cow.
Fingerprint recognition is part of biometrics that uses the unique physical and behavioral characteristics to recognize individuals. Facial shape, voice, iris, retina, blood vessel shape and DNA are other examples of biometric traits. Biometrics is widely used in finance, computer, communication, access control amid growing security issues. In particular, fingerprint recognition is commonly used in crime prevention, investigation, immigration control and facility security because data collection is easy and the error rate is very low. For this reason, it is now applied to financial transactions via smartphone after Apple and Samsung introduced it for their products.
By Lee Dong-in
[¨Ï Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]