ABI Research: Biometrics market to pass $13 billion in 2015

Overall revenues for the biometrics market are forecasted to hit US$13.8 billion in 2015. The majority of revenues in most biometric recognition technologies are still stemming from governmental entities. However, due to increased consumer acceptance of biometric modalities, consumer and enterprise segments are predicted to catch up with governmental spending in late 2017, thus becoming the dominant portion of the market. Recent events will no doubt increase governmental spending in 2015 as security measures are intensified in Europe and the United States.

Government spending on biometrics is increasing worldwide and will continue to do so up until late 2016-early 2017 with growing terrorist threats in European Union (E.U.) and United States intensifying this effect. Fingerprint recognition is the most commonly used—albeit not the most accurate—biometric recognition technology used for the following reasons: a) there is an existing infrastructure that can support AFIS and non AFIS technology; b) citizens are gradually gaining acceptance in terms of utilizing their fingerprint data to identify themselves; c) the accuracy-cost-acceptance-intrusive ratio of fingerprint technology makes it ideal at this point-in-time in a larger scale than other biometrics.

Enterprise demand is cooking up a plethora of wearables and smartphone technologies to implement biometrics into their products and services. Consumer and company spending on biometrics are expected to surpass governmental spending in 2018 exceeding US$8 billion in total revenues. Companies like Apple and Samsung are leading the field in mobile integration of biometric modalities while 3M Cogent, MorphoTrak, and NEC Corporation are leading the biometrics field altogether. North America and Asia-Pacific will drive the field in sales in the following years while countries in the Middle East are expected to have mandatory biometric registration in the coming years.