In his annual New Year’s letter to investors, NEXT Biometrics CEO Tore Etholm-Idsoe is anticipating considerable growth in the smart card market, which he says “represents almost endless opportunities”.
Etholm-Idsoe points out that NEXT’s flexible fingerprint sensor, which is intended for smart cards, is now in prototype form, with the company working with partner Innolux to get the offering into mass production by the end of Q2 of this year. The goal is to have the capacity to produce two million sensors per month this year, and to ramp it up to 10 million per month next year.
Biometric smart cards are an increasingly popular product, with multiple companies’ offerings having generated considerable buzz at last year’s Trustech 2016 event. For its part, NEXT Biometrics appears to be at the forefront in pioneering flexible biometric smart cards.
As for the company’s current main line of business, providing low-cost biometric sensors for a wide range of product formats, Etholm-Idsoe asserts that there are “clear signs that the market for fingerprint sensors for notebooks and tablets is growing”, and that further revenue growth from this sector is expected for next year. Meanwhile, a new ASIC microchip is expected to significantly cut down on costs all around, and the company’s management says it should be available for sampling at the end of Q1, and in mass production in Q3.
(Originally posted on FindBiometrics)
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