The research outfit Counterpoint Research said in a bog post that globally, 35% of the phones sold around the world in the first six months of 2020 had embedded hardware security.
Research analyst Parv Sharma said: “Smartphones have become vulnerable to attacks. We use them for banking, financial transactions, biometrics, user data and even as digital keys for smart homes and automobiles. Therefore, the need for hardware security in smartphones is stronger than ever.
“Hardware security is being adopted not only in the premium segment smartphones, but it has trickled down to the mid-segment as well. The sales of secure smartphones declined 6% in H1 2020 compared to H1 2019. The decline is due to the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, which led to reduced overall smartphone sales in H1 2020.”
"A trusted execution environment is a secure area of the main processor which runs its OS and communicates with the main OS via a restricted interface. The strong box approach is more secure. Chipset OEMs have embedded embedded security elements in their SoC.
"Apple’s portfolio for 2020 has an embedded secure element in the A Series chipsets. Apple led the secure chipset market with 39% share in H1 2020.”
Shah said Huawei had also implemented an integrated secure element in its SoCs, but its share would drop due to US restrictions.
"Qualcomm has adopted a secure element as a secure processing unit in the Snapdragon 800 Series," he added. "It has also trickled down to the Snapdragon 700 Series in the mid-end segment.
"Samsung implements a physically unclonable function which serves as a unique identifier. Samsung has also used a Quantum Random Number Generator in the Galaxy A Quantum to make the device more secure.”
