Re: Siemens cell phone . . .
It's been suggested to me offline that Brad's find might not be an IDX deal, but simply a Siemens/Infineon deal.
Here's how: Infineon has its own algorithms, although it does not have software for a networked solution like BioLogon does. If the Siemens phone is not using a remote server for algorithm matching, for instance, and doing all the work in the phone itself (this takes a fair bit of computing power, but you may have it in a $550 model state of the art cell phone), then Infineon's own algorithms can handle simply unlocking the phone with a biometric match.
In other words, you match your fingerprint template to a reference template you have already enrolled in the phone yourself (there is one company out there that has a self-enrollment product, although I don't know that Infineon does, or has a deal for it). With a match, you get a dial tone. It is not elegant, and wouldn't give you any precision on various wireless data transmissions, etc., but it would make the phone unusable for a thief and would therefore provide some measure of protection against it being used for database access. The fact that you won't be using a PIN with the phone fits with this theory (or the theory that the cell phone uses one:many matching remotely).
Even under this scenario, it's a favorable development for IDX, since it will give MOT a further incentive to use IDX in a cell phone, and it implies that Siemens may eventually be in the market for a BioLogon solution for wireless network access. |
