Competition--yesterday's Interactive Edition of the WSJ had an article on "Digital Signatures Ready to Put Mark on E-Revolution", by Phyllis Plitch.
Lead begins by stating "Every so often, Scott Moody sands off his fingerprints." Point made is that AuthenTic's technology, a scanner that looks below the outer layer of skin to read the print patterns beneath, can read fingerprints correctly even if they are clean or dry, nicked, scratched or sanded off entirely. I do not recall Identix even being mentioned in the article. There was discussion of some other firms, like VeriSign, which has a strategic alliance with Dun & Bradstreet to electonically identify and validate parties conducting high-value business-to-business transactions through D&B's eccelerate.com unit. Visionic also mentioned.
A major holdup to development of the industry is the lack of a legal framework. "If a fraudulent transaction takes place, for example, who takes the loss, the buyer, seller or verification authority?"
article states that one industry observer estimates that there are as many as 150 companies already competing for pieces of the pie.
Hence, is IDX's poor price performance due to competing firms' better technologies or uncertainty about whether industry is ready to take-off without a legal framework, or are there too many competitors? |
