Expected
Growth
As organizations search for more secure authentication methods for user access, e-commerce, and other security applications, biometrics is gaining increasing attention. The ballooning growth in electronic transactions has resulted in greater demands for fast and accurate user identification and authentication methods. Biometric technology is now being deployed as a means of tightening security and simplifying user access in a landscape once guarded only by expensive firewalls and easily crackable passwords, subject to configuration issues, human error, and
malice.
For years, the only users of biometrics were a few government and military agencies, law enforcement fingerprinting, and an occasional James Bond movie. For the most part, however, business and industry ignored the field and its futuristic technology because it was too obscure, too esoteric, or too expensive. All this appears to be changing. The prices of biometric products and systems are falling as demand for the technology grows and more vendors enter the market. Fraud, security breaches, and human administrative error are driving the rapid expansion of biometric technology.
Total biometric revenues, are expected to grow rapidly through 2005. Much of the growth will be attributable to PC/Network Access and e-Commerce, although large-scale public sector deployments will continue to be an essential part of the industry.
By 2004, total Emerging Sector revenue (PC/Network Access, e-Commerce and Telephony, Physical Access, and Surveillance) surpassed Mature Sector revenue (Criminal Identification and Citizen Identification)
2001 estimates show that finger-scan continues to be the leading biometric technology in terms of market share, commanding nearly 50% of non-AFIS biometric revenue. Facial-scan, with 15.4% of the non-AFIS market, surpasses hand-scan, which had been second to finger-scan in terms of revenue generation.
Highlights
- Biometric revenues are expected to grow from $399.4 million in 2000 and $523.9 million in 2001 to $1.9 billion in 2006
- Large-scale public sector biometric usage, currently 70% of the
biometric market, will be
surpassed by private sector deployments
- Biometrics sales for PC/network access will reach $423 million in
2005
- Finger-scan and biometric middleware will emerge as two critical
technologies for the desktop, together comprising approximately 40% of the biometric market
by 2005
- The two industry verticals that will adopt biometrics most rapidly
are financial services
and health care, with revenues increasing at average annual rate of
72% and 56% respectively
