Fujitsu Microelectronics America, Inc.

Fujitsu Limited and Fujitsu Microelectronics, to Provide Fingerprint Sensor Technology to Mobile Telephone, Multi-Function IC Card Markets

San Jose, CA, August 1, 2001 — Fujitsu Microelectronics, Inc. (FMI) today announced plans to begin supplying silicon fingerprint sensors to the rapidly-expanding worldwide market.

The announcement follows Fujitsu's licensing of fingerprint sensor technology and fingerprint authentication software from Veridicom, Inc. based in Santa Clara, Calif., in May, and the creation of a development center at FMI dedicated to fingerprint sensor technology. Fujitsu Limited and FMI plan to develop, manufacture, and market the sensors and authentication software packages for the multi-function IC card and mobile telephone markets, according to Douglas McArthur, director of FMI's new Biometric Sensor Product Group.

"Sophisticated authentication systems already use fingerprint sensor technology, and the rapid growth of broadband Internet will create demand for fingerprint sensors in smart cards and mobile phones," McArthur said. "A significant driver of this growth over the next few years will be adoption of personal authentication systems for privacy in e-commerce transactions and in controlling access to electronic databases. We believe Fujitsu can serve this market very well, based on our process technologies and development experience."

The fingerprint sensor market has grown to $16 million worldwide, and is expected to grow to almost $800 million by the end of calendar 2004.

Focus on Fast-Growing Market for Capacitive Sensors
Fujitsu and FMI will focus on the development of capacitive fingerprint sensors, which provide highly reliable authentication and high image resolution. Because of the high reliability of their authentication ability, the high resolution of their images, and their compactness, electrostatic capacity models will likely comprise almost 95 percent of the total market by 2004.

Fujitsu and FMI plan to supply innovative, highly reliable authentication products required for broadband Internet applications. For example, the companies plan to integrate a fingerprint sensor with an LSI chip for multi-function IC cards incorporating Fujitsu's next generation Ferroelectric RAM (FRAM) non-volatile memory device.

Fujitsu's capacitive fingerprint sensor is a silicon-based semiconductor device that offers stable operation without the use of optics. It is designed to be easy to integrate with various types of control circuits, memory, interfaces, and other technology. Power consumption is very low.

The sensor surface can be easily adjusted according to the type of use, and to achieve the optimal fingerprint analysis level based on the choice of semiconductor manufacturing technology. It is built with a hard protective surface that is very damage-resistant.

Authentication Software
Authentication software preserves privacy by making it impossible to recreate a fingerprint image from the stored fingerprint data. It offers superior levels of authentication accuracy with technology that compensates image distortions due to finger rotation or shifting. Data stored for one fingerprint takes up just 300 to 600 bytes, easing data management. Fujitsu's authentication software will be bundled in a complete software development kit.

Initial products will be announced by the end of the third calendar quarter.

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About Fujitsu Microelectronics America, Inc.

Fujitsu Microelectronics, Inc. (FMI) designs, manufactures and markets a broad range of semiconductors and electronic devices. For product information, please call 1-800-866-8608, or visit the company web site at www.fmi.fujitsu.com

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