Digital Persona and IBM . . .
The first thing you have to recognize is that IBM is not OEMing the Digital Persona product. It won't be branded with an IBM logo, and IBM will not be marketing it. Instead, the DP peripheral has been certified as being able to work smoothly with IBM PCs, so Digital Persona will be able to go out and try to sell these as an add-on to IBM customers. This is not a breakthrough deal for Digital Persona.
IBM could similarly partner with IDX, for example. However, it seems unlikely that with a DP "partner" IBM will be branding and OEMing for anyone else. Why would IBM OEM an item and certify as compatible a non-IBM competitor? It seems more likely to me that IBM has decided not to be an OEM for fingerprint biometrics, at least at this time, since that was surely DP's (and probably IDX's) pitch.
Finally, the price of $150 is still too high to compete with IDX . . . especially after the introduction of the DFR-300, which will be cheaper, at least as good in its BioLogon 2.0 software, and embedded rather than in a peripheral. And IDX is getting marketed by CPQ and MOT.
The news here is not that DP has moved to competitive status, but that IBM should come off any list of likely near-term PC biometric OEMs. |
