Unless users develop a taste for models that are veritable Swiss knives of cell phones, face recognition may have to compete against other features -- such as music players, video players, radios, TVs and Bluetooth.
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The Japanese technology company Omron is ready to launch a feature that equips a mobile device to accurately identify its user.
The face recognition software uses a cell phone's built-in camera.
Omron plans to demonstrate the technology at the Security Show 2005, which begins March 2nd in Tokyo.
The recognition software -- known as the "OKAO Vision Face Recognition Sensor" -- requires no additional hardware, and the company claims it is 99 percent accurate.
The technology, which can run on such operating systems as Symbian, BREW, embedded Linux, and ITRON, is supposedly so good it verifies a cell phone owner in less than a second -- even when the angle of the camera does not optimally capture the user's face.
"It's almost impossible to link value-added features to sales," said Yankee Group analyst John Jackson.
"What we've found in our research is that most people buy their cell phones based on price," he told NewsFactor.
Jackson says 34 percent of mobile phone users in North America did not pay for their devices.
And 85 percent of people with handsets paid less than $100.
Consumers' lukewarm response to camera phones may have more to do with an aversion to using and paying for wireless network services in order to manage photo files.