Florida Today

Sensors get rave reviews

June 12, 2003
By Brian Monroe

MELBOURNE -- From something big enough to walk into to something small enough to fit in your pocket, local fingerprint-sensor maker AuthenTec Inc. is winning awards and finding new markets for its semiconductor-based products.

The Melbourne-based company, which employs 52 people, designs and manufactures biometric chips that use fingerprints to restrict access to computers, personal digital assistants, cellular phones, cars and commercial buildings.

That list just got longer. The National Association of Home Builders Research Center named AuthenTec the winner of the 2003 Innovative Housing Technology Awards, noting its sensors are leading the charge in technology innovation applicable to the home-building industry.

On a smaller scale, AuthenTec's sensors also are being incorporated into a portable memory device, dubbed the ClipDrive Bio, which holds up to 128 megabytes of data, enough for downloaded songs, programs or multiple reports.

The unit, developed by Memory Experts International, comes equipped with a Universal Serial Bus -- a plug-and-play interface between a computer and add-on devices -- to easily access a computer to retrieve the data and resembles a large, clip-on marker.

Analysts say these latest announcements help AuthenTec increase its visibility in the biometrics industry, which is expected to grow from $93.4 million in 2001 to $2.1 billion in 2006 on an increased demand for higher-security and personal-verification measures.

"Personal security, protection and privacy . . . is definitely a growing market," said Scott Moody, AuthenTec's president and chief executive.

He added that his company's fingerprint sensors -- which can be used to replace physical access cards and keys, personal-identification numbers and passwords -- are unique because they can read below the surface of the skin to the "live layer," and aren't affected by dry, worn, callused, dirty or oily skin.

Moody said he is pleased with the company's latest award, but is hoping to capture a greater honor in the near future.

AuthenTec is wrapping up its own comparative product test, pitting its own sensor chips against those of competitors, as a tuneup before a similar industrywide initiative.

AuthenTec invited, interviewed and paid nearly 300 Brevard County residents to help it test its products in an attempt to fine-tune its chips for the upcoming Round Five of the International Biometric Group's Comparative Biometric Testing.

Scoring high in that testing, the biometrics industry's leading independent data-comparison tool, could open the door to large corporations or government agencies looking to place biometrics into their technologies on a large scale.

So far, however, AuthenTec, a spinoff of Melbourne-based communications-equipment manufacturer Harris Corp., has been able to grow in a general downturn in the tech industry.

In 2001, the company sold 80,000 chips worldwide. In 2002, the company more than doubled its output by selling more than 200,000. In the first quarter of 2003, the company equaled its production of chips for the previous full year.

For the second quarter of 2003, the company projects it could sell double that, roughly 400,000, possibly eclipsing 800,000 to 1 million chips for the year.

The company doesn't release revenue figures for its chips -- which sell for $6 to $23 apiece -- but is hoping to be profitable by the end of 2004.

Combining the increase in chip sales with a good showing in the industry's biometric testing would boost AuthenTec, which already is considered a "strong company in the finger-scan space," said Trevor Prout, a spokesman for International Biometric Group, a biometric consulting, integration and research firm based in New York.

"There are dozens of finger-scan vendors, and AuthenTec is definitely in the top tier," he said, adding that using the company's chips in the home-building area is "an interesting solution to home access."

The only drawback, Prout said, is fingerprint sensors -- used to restrict access to commercial buildings and businesses -- haven't been embraced for use in new homes because of a lack of "awareness and acceptance and the cost of the technology. Keys work, and they are cheap."

Still, Jason Knott, editor of TecHome Builder, said the "day has dawned, when the 3-pound set of keys is becoming obsolete," in favor of a small, fingerprint sensor that can't be copied or stolen.

Knott added that such convenience is "available at the security levels homeowners and builders have come to expect," and products such as AuthenTec's have "the potential to improve the modernization and livability of homes."

Joe DiPrima, president of Satellite Beach-based DiPrima Construction Corp., agreed that security always is on the minds of prospective homebuyers.

"It's a question that comes up every time we talk about building or selling a house," he said, adding that consumers first ask about the general safety of an area, then inquire about if the community is gated or if the individual properties come with alarm systems.

DiPrima said he used the fingerprint-sensor technology in some commercial buildings he has built, but said that same technology would interest only a small percentage of homebuyers.

"Most of the people we encounter are not that sophisticated," he said. Implementing fingerprint sensors in a new home "takes someone very intellectually oriented in high-tech or someone who has been in the security business and wants the maximum security they can have."