Right now Samsung and other Android OEMs source their fingerprint sensors from other companies. However for Samsung it is possible that in the future, the company could be interested in developing its own fingerprint sensors, although whether or not it’ll just be exclusively for Samsung’s use or for licensing out remains to be seen.
This is according to a report out of Korea (via SamMobile) that Samsung Electronics’ System LSI could be working on developing their own fingerprint sensor chips. Apparently this has been in the works since last year and is apparently in the final stages of development, and come 2017 we could see Samsung commercialize it.
Samsung is said to be planning to use it in their low and mid-range smartphones, before moving onto their higher-end devices. Given that Samsung already makes a lot of their own components, like their Exynos chipsets, RAM, SSDs, and so on, making their own fingerprint sensor isn’t that much of a stretch.
It is interesting that they are still focusing on that tech despite debuting iris scanning technology in the Note 7 a few months ago, a feature that is also expected to find its way into the Galaxy S8 next year. In any case given that this is a rumor, naturally you should take it with a grain of salt for now.