User 121249

AuthenTec, Inc.: The Power of Touch

Mr Moody manufactures a great and compelling story - but all is not well behind the big curtain. AUTH designed its finger print sensors for the PC business - where power, MIPS, and memory are only minor concerns. Unfortunately, the PC space is limited TAM (40M units/annum). The bigger opportunity is the cell phone space (TAM of 1B+). Because AUTH designed their sensor for the PC, they are getting crushed in the cell phone mktplace where their 1710 sensor uses 33 times more power at standby than competitors, and 16X more power at authentication than competitors. In terms of MIPS, they need a >ARM9 processor at 200MIPS - while Atrua can use an ARM 7 and 50 MIPS (70-80% of the world's cell phones are ARM7 - not the more expensive ARM9). And because they use a proprietary (20 yr old) pattern matching technique for finger print templates, their templates use large amounts of space (10K bytes) when compared to the ISO standard (as well as FBI/CIA/law enforcement) of minutia matching. AUTH needs 20 - 30 X more template meory than competitors (not meaningful for PCs - but ultra-important for handhelds). In addition - AUTH does not own its own authentication software, is being sued for patent infringement by ATmel, and is reportedly, "buying" business in Japan. Have you seen Atrua's press release where they claim to have won 17 of the last 20 commercially-available cell phone models? If this is the case, then AUTH is a short-timer in terms of its "time in the sun."