Fingerprint scanning arriving on Android devices in six months, claims FIDO Alliance president
Android fingerprint sensors 6 months away — SEATTLE — Michael Barrett cringes every time he has to enter a password on his smartphone. — But six months from now Barrett says he will be able …
Context & Ripple Effects
FIDO Alliance president Michael Barrett's six-month claim — reported by USA Today and picked up within days by The Verge, Engadget, SlashGear, Pocket-lint and others — lands at a moment when Android dominates volume: Kantar put it at 51.7% of US smartphone sales in the quarter ending April 2013, and Canalys credited it with a third of all handsets shipped in Q4 2012. That scale is exactly why a password-replacement standard matters.
The claim is unconfirmed — it rests on one executive's forecast rather than announced hardware — and the security backdrop sharpens its stakes: researchers reported in May 2013 that Android is the only mobile platform being actively targeted, with malware variants growing fast enough to draw comparisons to Windows on the desktop.
First-order effects
- If Barrett's timeline holds, handset makers selling into Android's majority share of the US and European markets face a near-term bill-of-materials decision to add fingerprint sensors, while Android users get a biometric alternative to typed passwords.
Second-order effects
- App developers and service providers serving Android would need to support whatever authentication interface ships with the sensors, or risk friction against rivals that do; security teams would also have to weigh biometric login against a threat environment where Android is the only actively targeted mobile platform.
Third-order effects
- A standards-body-driven rollout like FIDO's points toward authentication becoming a shared, cross-vendor layer rather than a per-company feature — shifting leverage from whoever owns the password database to whoever certifies the standard.
The trend: Mobile authentication is moving from passwords to biometrics through industry alliances, with Android's market dominance making it the decisive proving ground.