The Proliferation of TEE-enabled Devices
As we work towards that half a billion mark this year it is a good time to take stock of exactly how far we have come. In just the last 12 months Trustonic has grown its device maker portfolio tremendously: adding HTC, TCL, Meizu, and ZTE to our publicly announced list of partners and we continue to work with others in stealth mode. As you can imagine, this is no mean feat. To accomplish this takes a dedicated team of Engineers and FAEs spread out in key locations around the world to best support our customers where they need it most. With design centres in Korea, Taiwan, the US, and Europe, these teams help device makers to not only integrate our technology on their devices, but also utilise the enhanced security in their own products and services. These use cases, including DRM, Enterprise, Device Security, and Payment, provide a key differentiation factor in a crowded OEM space and allow our partners to offer their customers the security and functionality that end users demand today.
Payments and Beyond
One of our partners, Samsung Mobile, recently released their Galaxy S6 Edge+ and Note5 devices with a flagship feature being Samsung Pay [1].This, coupled with Apple’s Pay [2] shows that the battle for people’s e-wallets is hotting up. Google themselves have Google Wallet [8] and I expect more OEMs to get in on the act. These payment services showcase a real need for tough security. Functionality such as strong cryptography, secure storage, and Trusted User Interfaces (TUI) all play a key role in keeping sensitive data safe and the TEE is the natural place for this. Another partner, ZTE, announced their enhanced Network Operator Services utilising the TEE and another, TCL, are enjoying the benefits of a TEE for helping deploy premium services and content. These and many more OEM use cases show the great benefit of using a full-featured hardware and software solution that only a TEE can give.
What Next?
It is clear that the use of the TEE does not stop at device makers which is why right from the start, Trustonic have offered over-the-air (OTA) deployment of Trusted Services. These services, from Bitcoin wallets to payment engines, content marketplaces to enterprise login tokens, all have one thing in common: they use Trustonic’s unique backend datacenter technologies to arrive on the device post manufacture and are installed securely into the TEE. Trustonic have a healthy Application Developer ecosystem with software and services [4] to help our partners secure their application and it is clear, with the massive device install base of our TEE, the potential for Trusted Application Developers is massive.
[1] https://www.samsung.com/us/samsung-pay/
[2] https://www.apple.com/uk/apple-pay/
