July 28, 2012: Apple buys biometrics company AuthenTec, acquiring the technology that will power Touch ID for authentication and secure payments on the iPhone and other devices.
With a price tag of $356 million, the deal gives Apple the right to use AuthenTec hardware, software and patents. In the short term, Apple engineers start working to build Touch ID sensors into the iPhone 5s. In the longer term, AuthenTec’s mobile wallet tech paves the way for Apple Pay.
iPhone fingerprint sensor: A long time in the making
Apple didn’t invent the fingerprint sensor — it bought the tiny company that made it practical. The 2012 acquisition of AuthenTec might have looked to some like an obscure semiconductor deal at the time, but it laid the foundation for Touch ID, one of the most transformative security features ever to reach the iPhone.
By turning a tedious passcode into a seamless tap, Apple didn’t just make smartphones easier to unlock. It normalized biometric authentication, reshaped mobile payments, and set a new standard the rest of the industry raced to match.
Although the dream of using fingerprint sensors on smartphones had been around for a while, AuthenTec’s technology didn’t work quite as planned at first. Speaking in 2013, the year after Apple’s acquisition of the company, AuthenTec co-founder F. Scott Moody recalled how an early demo for IBM went wrong in the worst possible way: It mistook IBM’s chief technology officer for the other AuthenTec co-founder.
However, after AuthenTec made changes and exhibited a final product, it didn’t take long for companies including Motorola, Fujitsu and Apple to make overtures regarding a potential buyout. Apple ultimately won on this day in 2012.
Nonetheless, Motorola beat Apple to market when its Mobility Atrix 4G shipped with a fingerprint sensor in 2011, two years before Apple launched Touch ID. However, while Motorola’s technology worked reasonably well, it proved less than intuitive. The fingerprint scanner resided on the phone’s back. And users needed to swipe it rather than simply touch it for authentication.
AuthenTec tech makes Touch ID better than the competition
Apple’s Touch ID solution, on the other hand, wasn’t just secure. It proved very speedy as well — considerably quicker and easier than tapping in even a short, four-digit PIN.
“The biggest thing Apple gets out of this is probably a strong play for using biometrics for identity in general — for online and brick-and-mortar purchases, for logging into websites and even for digital signatures,” Cult of Mac wrote at the time of the AuthenTec acquisition.
Touch ID arrived on the iPhone 5s in 2013, used initially only to unlock the handset. A year later, for the launch of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, Apple expanded Touch ID’s usefulness. Suddenly the fingerprint sensor worked to authenticate iTunes and App Store purchases via Apple Pay.
Touch ID, Face ID and the future of Apple biometrics
With the launch of Face ID, the facial-recognition feature Apple rolled out in 2017 with the iPhone X, it appeared the days of Touch ID were largely at an end just five years after Apple bought AuthenTec. However, Apple still incorporates the technology into some of its products.
The third-generation iPhone SE, released in early 2022, still utilizes Touch ID in its old-school Home button. And the latest entry-level iPad, the M4 iPad Air and iPad mini 7 come with a Touch ID sensor built into the power button atop the tablets.
What did you think of Touch ID the first time you saw or used it? Are you happy that it’s been replaced on newer iPhones? Leave your comments and recollections below.
