Biometrics Tech to Enter Smart Home through NEXT

Oslo, Norway-based NEXT Biometrics announced on April 22 that a major client plans to ship more than 1 million biometrics units in the next 12 to 18 months for use in the Smart Home segment.

Smart Home technology is becoming much more prevalent and as it becomes ubiquitous and expected for consumers to use personal devices to remotely control their homes and appliances, security is paramount. One solution is to secure the physical devices with fingerprint or other biometric scanners.

NEXT Biometrics makes fingerprint scanners for M2M applications and a major client (it declined to identify) has ordered 100,000 sensors for Smart Home product use and the client expects to install more than 1 million units in the next year and a half. The NEXT sensor deliveries are set to begin in July and completed by November.

The client will launch the biometric-enabled product later this year, and its name will then be made public.

“After 12 months of design and testing iterations our customer, a leading design and manufacturing house, moved forward with its first volume order,” said Tore Etholm-Idsøe, CEO, NEXT Biometrics. “The application is Smart Home-related and will be distributed by a brand name player. This order is significant as it further highlights the potential volumes in these ‘NEXT-enabled’ markets, where our high quality and low cost sensor enables the market itself.”

Enabled by its patented NEXT Active Thermal principle, NEXT Biometrics sells area fingerprint sensors for a wide range of product formats including smartphones, tablets, PC, doors, time registration systems, wearables, payment terminals, flash drives, USB-tokens and key fobs.

Scan away.