Last week ended with a strange event, coloring a positive week of big acquisitions and exciting mCommerce news with a veil of confusion: a bogus press release was distributed, falsely informing the media that Samsung had purchased Sweedish sensor manufacturer Fingerprint Cards (FPC). This week, though not bringing much more light to the bungle other than claims that the PR was a clever forgery, put FPC back in the limelight with the publishing of its Q3 2013 results, which have turned out to be its best ever reported.
Back in the realm of the speculated and rumored, leaked code from the upcoming HTC One max smartphone seems to imply new functionality in regards to its fingerprint sensor. The new phone, which is set to be the largest HTC model yet, looks like it will be sporting the ability to enroll all ten of its user’s fingers, allowing her to assign quick launch applications that activate based on whether a left middle finger is used to unlock the device or a right thumb.
With adoption of fingerprint sensors on phones already at the point where we are seeing experimentation in how the technology is applied, marketers are turning their attention to how this can affect communication between consumer and vendor. A panel from last week’s Money2020 in Las Vegas brought figures from across the advertising and mobile commerce together in order to discuss what the idea of a constantly connected and perpetually authenticated customer can mean in the world of location based marketing.
Another big topic of conversation that springs up out of the impeding ubiquity of strong online authentication enabled by biometric smartphones is that of standards. The FIDO Alliance has rightly been getting a lot of press recently, announcing new members every week who are dedicated to the open universal protocol. This week the newest organization to fly the FIDO flag is Oberthur Technologies.
Finally, the Money2020 post-coverage continued yesterday with a rundown of the opening keynote, which set the tone for the event and also shared some insight into exactly the kind of innovation that will be needed to thrive in the coming years as the mobile revolution fully takes hold in the world of commerce.
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