Renowned industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is now confident that Apple will abandon Touch ID in favor of its new facial recognition technology on all of next year’s iPhone models.
The KGI Securities analyst expressed this view in a new note to investors, less than a month after a previous note in which he said the fate of Touch ID will depend upon how consumers respond to the iPhone X’s Face ID system. Consumers still haven’t got their hands on the new device yet, of course, but something has evidently persuaded the decision makers at Apple that Face ID is going to be a hit, with Kuo also having recently said that future iPad models will also get Face ID.
In his latest note, Kuo explains that the shift from Touch ID to Face ID “will allow all new models to realize a competitive advantage” thanks to “full-screen design and TrueDepth Camera/Facial recognition/Face ID/AR applications.” Of course, all of those advantages could still be offered in a device that also has a fingerprint scanner, located on its rear or a side button, or even under the display, as many had expected would be the case for Touch ID on this year’s big new iPhone. Kuo does believe that some Android phones next year will feature fingerprint sensors embedded in their displays, but he says Apple isn’t going to continue its work in this area.
Will that leave the door open for rivals like Samsung to get a competitive advantage? In a separate investor note this week, Kuo said that company’s Note 9 smartphone will feature in-display fingerprint sensor technology in addition to its iris authentication feature. And if consumers are now attached enough to fingerprint recognition, that could prove to be a selling point. In any case, it seems increasingly likely that such fingerprint scanning systems will increasingly appear along with facial recognition as the mobile industry adapts to Apple’s big bet on Face ID.
Sources: AppleInsider, Business Insider, TechRadar
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