Biometrics has replaced traditional identification methods used across various industries such as government, automotive, consumer electronics, and healthcare.
Biometrics has replaced traditional identification methods used across various industries such as government, automotive, consumer electronics, and healthcare. It has become a preferred option to authenticate and identify people based on their unique physical or behavioral characteristics. Earlier, government organizations only used biometrics for identification and authentication purposes. However, a gradual rise in the adoption of technologies such as face recognition, fingerprint recognition, and iris recognition, as well as a high level of security offered by biometric systems, have resulted in the rapid adoption of biometrics in commercial applications.
Biometric systems, based on different authentication methods, including facial recognition and hand geometry, are increasingly used in various sectors, such as retail, healthcare, industrial, IT & telecom, gaming, hospitality, education, financial services, and manufacturing.
Traditional security measures of identifying humans through identity documents (IDs) and personal identification numbers (PINs) have several limitations and do not offer high security. Organizations and enterprises worldwide are keen on implementing stringent security measures to protect personal/critical data (such as medical details and financial transactions) and restrict malicious access to their equipment and systems. All these factors provide a high-growth opportunity for the players in the biometric system market. Introducing the smart city concept driven by rapid urbanization is expected to attract substantial investments by governments to deploy smart security solutions such as intelligent and multimodal biometric systems. The retail sector is likely to be the dominant user of a biometric system to understand customer buying patterns, which will help retailers maintain a sufficient stock of the products they sell and provide personalized services to their customers. Currently, fingerprint recognition is the most preferred authentication method due to reasons such as high accuracy, ease of use. and wide availability of sensors. It is very convenient and cost-effective for secure authentication: however. Facial recognition, voice recognition, palm vein recognition, and finger vein recognition have high-growth opportunities in the short- and mid-term future.
Consumer electronics manufacturers, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and home automation devices, are keen on integrating advanced features and functionalities into their products to attract customers and expand their client base. As consumers adopt highly advanced connected devices and digital technologies to process critical information, security concerns among end users are created. Therefore, modern consumers prefer using devices that support biometric authentication to access bank accounts, email accounts, and other personal data such as medical records and financial information. Similarly, biometric technology-based smartphones are increasingly being used to secure credentials for accessing buildings, doors, and IT systems, thereby delivering a better experience to users and presenting various opportunities to providers of portable access control solutions. All these factors boost the demand for smartphones, and a similar trend will likely be observed soon.
Biometric technologies are also increasingly being used in smart homes. The growing proliferation of smart cameras, smart speakers, etc., is driving the deployment of biometrics in smart homes. For instance, a smart camera recognizes the faces to identify family members. Fingerprint sensors and scanners are being adopted for home security, while voice recognition provides control over smart home devices. Integrating biometric technology, such as fingerprint recognition, has successfully eliminated the need to maintain physical keys for locking and unlocking and replace them if lost. Using biometrics may even allow controlling the locks remotely through smartphones, giving the owner full responsibility for the home security.
The growing adoption of consumer electronics integrated with sophisticated and connected technologies creates an urgent need for biometric innovations such as fingerprint and facial scanning in electronic products for better security. This accelerates the biometric system market growth. Advanced fingerprint-sensing technology allows users to unlock their devices within a few seconds. The modern Android operating system is compatible with multi-mode phone authentication and in-display fingerprint biometrics. Companies such as Apple (US), SAMSUNG (south Korea), Huawei Technologies (China), Xiaomi (China), Lenovo (China), and LG Electronics (South Korea) have introduced fingerprint sensor-enabled smartphone models.