A few points to consider

Just going back over the announcement of March 5th and a couple of points come to mind that I think are worth sharing.

“During this phase of the program, the WBT Development Team also developed a multi-biometric system built around WBT’s unique, patented cornea-based technology and incorporating other eye-based biometric modalities. The different biometric modalities combine as a single sensor, multi-modal and multi-algorithmic biometric, generating further advantages to the competitiveness of the technology in the market. This new multi-biometric system was successfully incorporated into the prototype unit utilised for the performance testing”.

Why, at this late stage in the planned development process, did WBT go ahead and develop another modality for integration with their cornea based biometric. And develop it they did. Rather than just buying a generic “white-label” biometric off the shelf iris scanner,(if you can) or modifying or adapting an existing one, they went ahead and developed one from ground up – one that has significant advantages over the competition.

“In addition to its high fidelity (reliability and accuracy), the WBT technology also has a number of competitive advantages including the use of the visible light spectrum (as opposed to near infra-red as used by most iris systems), universal application, fraud resistance and proof of liveness”

I suspect that it’s in this area – application of the technology in the visible light spectrum that is the subject of the recent patent application. Time will tell and I’m sure FMF will be right onto it.

However the question remains why did they go ahead and do this? Wasn’t the cornea based technology alone, sufficient to win the hearts and minds of their potential customers?

The answer is not revealed directly in the announcement. However it is clear to those of us that follow this company closely, that WBT / NXR is working very closely with their ‘commercialisation partners”.

When asked in a recent conversation I had with Patrick Flint, who the commercialisation partners are, he said in effect “you know who they are, they are the large international mobile phone companies, etc.

Whether it’s Samsung, or Apple or one of the Chinese OEMs, it doesn’t matter. The point remains that we are working very hard to build something that already takes account of the needs of our ultimate customer or end user of our product.

That alone should significantly shorten the time it takes to get the product to market, as well as making a deal with one or more of our targeted customers all the more likely.