Then officials bought small, thumb-sized, $99 devices that plug into a computer and identify fingerprints--no passwords or PINs necessary. The devices are powered by special computer chips from Motorola.
"The fingerprint reader solved our problems and is saving us a lot of money," said Mike Sherwood, the city's information-technology director. "This is just the beginning of not having to have car keys, house keys and passwords."
Motorola, the world's No. 3 chipmaker, is betting Sherwood is right. In November, the Schaumburg, Ill.-based company said it had developed an even better chip--85 percent smaller and 40 percent cheaper than the version helping Oceanside workers log in.
"This is a huge breakthrough," said Gerry Kaufhold, principal analyst at market researcher Cahners In-Stat Group. "The barrier has been the cost. We didn't expect to see something like this for another two years."
Motorola has agreements with Identix, of Sunnyvale, Calif., to make fingerprint-reading systems with the new chip that can be sold to PC makers, auto manufacturers and other industries for $20 or less.
Motorola intends to push the technology to cell-phone and car makers as well, said Roger Janikowski, business development manager for the company's Imaging and Entertainment solutions group.
"We could see 10 million to 50 million cell phones with this in a few years," said Richard Doherty, president and director of research at Envisioneering Group, a Seaford, N.Y.-based market research firm.
Motorola shares rose 0.75 to 148.25 in midmorning trading. They've risen 142 percent this year.
The developments come in a field called biometrics, which measures a physical trait such as the iris pattern of an eye and uses the results to verify a person's identity.
As more business is done over the Internet via computers, cell phones, pagers and other devices, the ability to make an ironclad confirmation of someone's identity will become more crucial. With fingerprint-reading biometrics, some analysts say, the answer seems to be, literally, at hand.
A fingerprint reader in a cell phone, for example, could render the device useless to thieves. A biometrics-enabled car could unlock for authorized people only, and adjust seats and mirrors for individual drivers. Fingerprints encoded on a credit card could reduce fraud by letting retailers verify a shopper's identity at the checkout counter.
International Data Corp., a Boston-based research firm, expects the consumer biometrics market, made up primarily of inexpensive devices for individual PCs, to total about $50 million in 1999, two-thirds larger than in 1998. Sales of all biometrics devices could reach $1 billion by 2001, said Motorola's Janikowski.
Biometric devices don't record a fingerprint in the ink-stained, cops-and-robbers sense. An image of the finger is captured by a special chip, then converted by software into a "map" of 20 to 40 points, called "minutiae," unique to each finger.
When someone tries to gain access to a device, the "map" of his fingerprint is compared to the one on file. If it matches, the person gets in. "What gets stored is a mathematical formula that only your finger can solve," said Cahners' Kaufhold.
Motorola and Identix teamed up about 17 months ago to develop a fingerprint-reading system that's offered by Compaq Computer. Identix makes the software and hardware for the devices, using Motorola's chip. They've sold about 150,000 units in the past 11 months.
Compaq, based in Houston, has sold the readers as attachments for PCs and installed them in keyboards. It plans to soon sell its Armada E500 laptop with a built-in fingerprint reader, said Jim Cortese, a Compaq spokesman. Laptops, which are easily stolen, are prime candidates for the technology, said Compaq spokeswoman Nora Hahn.
Besides computers, Grant Evans, Identix's vice president and general manager, said he expects his company's products to appear at retail checkout counters and in cable boxes to expedite online purchases through TVs.
Independent auto-parts maker TRW is developing its own fingerprint system for cars. Several auto companies have been testing TRW's technology as a replacement for ignition keys, said Ken Uffelman, manager of TRW's Identification and Verification unit.
TRW is also testing fingerprint-based entry at a low-income apartment building near Washington, Uffelman said.
"Not only does this increase security, but it cuts down the cost of lost keys," Uffelman said. "Imagine if this technology replaced every key or pass card. All it will take is a shift in people's perceptions and the economics to make it affordable."
Public perceptions could be an obstacle.
Carl Howe, research director at Forrester Research, said potential users, worried about invasions of privacy, may balk at submitting their fingerprints to so many people. Already, there's a "Fight the Fingerprint" Web site, which rails against biometric identification technologies and potential abuse by the government.
"I think biometric supporters underestimate the opposition," Howe said.
PC makers and software companies aren't deterred. Several equipment makers will unveil new biometric products by July, Identix's Evans said. Among them is Polaroid, which has developed a fingerprint reader for PCs similar to Identix's. It uses software from IBM.
"There's a lot of interest from corporations and this is a starting point for PC security of the future," Compaq's Cortese said.
Copyright 1999, Bloomberg L.P. All Rights Reserved.
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