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Technology Stocks : MXWL Maxwell Tech-Food Zapper kills bacteria FDA OK'd -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Richard N Lambert who wrote (484)	6/3/1999 1:25:00 PM
From: Richard N Lambert	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 509

I have copied the attached article for information. I have highlighted where I see Maxwell having the potential to jump in to the telecommunication device by providing the necessary power supply. Some interesting names (Siemens) that already have relationships with Maxwell. A report on fingerprint ID in the wireless market from PCS Week (June 2, 1999): "Within a couple years, built-in fingerprint sensors may become standard equipment on wireless handsets. No single development has taken the market by storm so far, but once you start looking around a surprising number of people turn out to be working on biometric applications for mobile handsets - and other bits of personal technology. The most obvious application is security. By verifying the person using a handset is actually its proper owner, carriers not only can reduce fraud losses, but also remove the burden of entering passwords and personal identification numbers from users. "However, security is not the only advantage gained from wireless biometrics. If handsets can positively identify a user, they can also communicate that identification to other people or to machines. Thus, biometric capability would provide an additional foundation for the handset-based e-cash and e-commerce applications that developers keep trying to float in market trials - and could even create a 'trusted third party authentication' market to boost carrier revenues. "Most of the development work in the field is being done in Europe . . . . The front runner appears to be German conglomerate Siemens AG [SMAWY], which demonstrated a prototype unit at the CeBIT trade show in March. The phone was basically Siemens' high-end SL10 model, with a fingertip sensor pad set dead center on the back of the handset. The 160-square-millimeter sensor reads a fingerprint by using electrical characteristics of human skin to work out the precise distance between the skin and each of some 65,000 capacitive sensor elements in the surface of the chip. "The result is a detailed, 500 dot per inch picture of the fingerprint, which is then analyzed by image processing software to extract characteristics like curves and endpoints. Finally, these characteristics are compared to a previously recorded user fingerprint, using the same system of 'minutiae' used by criminologists. Other development projects are not yet at the prototype stage, but companies are beginning to build alliances aimed at commercializing fingerprint technology. French handset maker Sagem SA has lined up a partnership with STMicroelectronics [STM] to put the capability in a range of high-volume consumer devices, including mobile phones. The companies will use STMicroelectronics' TouchChip technology, which also uses capacitive sensing to read a fingerprint, and algorithms developed by Sagem to analyze the results. "Closer to home, Motorola Inc. [MOT] also is getting into the act. The company forged a strategic alliance with Identix Inc. . . . Compaq Computer Corp. [CPQ] already markets a $99 plug-in device that provides fingerprint access to Windows 95 and NT servers using the Identicator system. However, it may not be as easy to move from the desktop to the mobile handset, an environment that will prove ******************************************************************* much more demanding in terms of miniaturization, power demands and cost. ******************************************************************* "Siemens' chip appears to address the size issue. The chip is no larger than the fingertip it is reading. Siemens execs say the company can manufacture the chip for less than $50 in commercial quantities. Adding $50 to the cost of a handset would not be done lightly, but given how directly this technology could attack fraud, and how heavy wireless fraud losses are, carriers may well find it acceptable. "The big issue would be reliability. . . . However, Raj Nanavati of New York-based research firm International Biometric Group says the systems actually work very well. "'The fingerchip technologies are very accurate,' says Nanavati, 'and if somebody's using them regularly on their cell phone, they'll be more so.' . . . "The biggest challenges to the technology arise from the dirty, rough-and-tumble nature of the outside world. Because of the constraints of the sensing technology, users must directly touch the microchip. 'You have a silicon chip that's usually in a very pristine environment,' Nanavati says. "People are wearing special suits and they're not allowed to wear perfume and so on. Then you ask someone to put their finger on it.' "However, vendors have made great progress in world-proofing the technology, largely solving problems with electrostatic discharge and malfunctions caused by objects tapping the chip. 'A couple years ago the chip technologies really weren't ready for this kind of application,' Nanavati says. 'Now they are.' "If the technical and cost challenges could be met, there would be plenty of applications waiting to use the technology. Wireless phones are only one of these, but they could prove an important one. The fraud application is obvious. However, carriers would potentially be able to leverage the systems they install for their own benefit. "Once a carrier has the ability to authenticate a user to its own satisfaction, it could also serve as a trusted third party providing that authentication to others. In a system where fingerprints have become a widely used form of identification, users would not necessarily want to register with every individual real world or online merchant they deal with. A single clearinghouse for verification would become a key part of the system, and phone companies would be an obvious choice to provide that service since they already have network infrastructures in place. "In the case of wireless, users already would carry their own authentication terminals, and their own fingerprint profiles, with them. The fingerprint information itself would reside only in the handset, helping allay user privacy concerns, and merchants would not need to supply scanners at points of sale. The same terminals used for credit card verification could provide a carrier-supplied confirmation code when a user provides a fingerprint to the handset .. . ."