China-based smartphone vendors have been mostly inclined to adopt fingerprint recognition for their mid-range and high-end models and consequently they will ship an estimated 200-300 smartphones featuring fingerprint-recognizing functions in 2016, according to Taiwan-based supply chain makers.
The drastically increased adoption of fingerprint recognition by China-based smartphone vendors is partly because China-based mobile payment service providers are poised for competition with Apple Pay which entered the China market on February 18, 2016 through cooperation with 19 local banks, the sources explained.
In 2015, only several China-based smartphone vendors, including Huawei Technologies, LeTV, Meizu and ZTE, adopted fingerprint recognition for a few models to test the market response, with total shipments estimated at 80 million units, the sources said.
In addition to Sweden-based Fingerprint Cards' dominating the China market of fingerprint-recognizing sensors, many Taiwan-based IC design houses, in view of the large demand in China, began shipments of such sensors to China-based smartphone vendors in the first quarter of 2016 and plan to increase shipments in the second half of the year, the sources indicated. Due to a large increase in supply, prices for fingerprint-recognizing sensors may fall 25% in the second half of 2016.
China-based touch module makers Shenzhen O-film Tech and Truly Opto-electronics have stepped into production of fingerprint-recognizing modules, the sources noted. In particular, Truly Opto-electronics ships 1.5-2.0 million fingerprint-recognizing modules a month currently, consisting of 1.3 million glass-cover modules and 200,000-700,000 film-coated units, and expects to increase monthly shipments to 3.5 million units in the second quarter and further to 5.0-7.0 million units in the second half of 2016, the sources indicated.
Quotes for a film-coated fingerprint-recognizing module and a glass-cover model stand at US$3.5-4.0 and US$5.0 respectively at present, the sources said. Due to largely increased supply, quotes for an entry-level fingerprint-recognizing module are expected to drop to slightly over US$3.0, the sources indicated.
