INSIGHTS / News

FotoNation Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tessera Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: TSRA) and the leading provider of computational imaging solutions for smartphones and digital still cameras, today announced its acquisition of Smart Sensors Limited (“SSL”), an award winning developer of iris recognition biometric technology, a transaction that closed in fourth quarter of 2014. 

Over the past 10 years, Smart Sensors has developed tools for iris feature extraction, biometric key creation and fast-matching which operate on many product and processor platforms. The use of biometric authentication and identification systems is rapidly increasing, moving onto mobile computing, notebooks, PCs, tablets and other communications platforms. Iris authentication technology from SSL enables increased device security and eliminates the need for passwords; it authenticates and verifies user presence for e-commerce, and provides secure access control to valuable assets such as physical locations and enterprise networks. 

“The iris structure yields five times as many distinct, identifiable features compared to fingerprints,” said Petronel Bigioi, Senior Vice President of Engineering and General Manager, FotoNation. “Smart Sensors’ team of PhD engineers has been focused on developing and improving iris-based biometric systems for over a decade. Integrating their capabilities with FotoNation’s class-leading face detection, tracking and recognition capacities will enable our customers to deliver unique solutions tailored for mobile devices and other high volume products, with exciting opportunities in the growing field of biometric authentication and identification.” 

“FotoNation’s complementary expertise and technology portfolio, along with its strong relationships in the smartphone and camera markets, will help us accelerate the adoption of SSL’s technology in high-volume applications,” added Martin George, General Manager of SSL.