Trends in biometric technology for 2014

Everyone is in agreement that the global market for biometrics will see massive growth in 2014, but opinion varies on where that growth will occur most.

Mobile was big in 2013, as were other consumer and healthcare applications, but what will 2014 be like for the industry?

According to new research from BCC Research, the global biometric technologies market is expected to reach $8.7 billion in 2013 and will increase to nearly $11.2 billion next year. In addition, BCC projects the market to grow to nearly $27.5 billion by 2019 and to register a five-year CAGR of 19.8% from 2014 to 2019.

When Apple launched the iPhone 5S in September 2013, there was a lot of media chatter about biometrics, but the reception in the biometrics community was hot and cold.

Some saw the iPhone 5S launch as the opening of the floodgates for consumer biometrics, but others have raised concerns of propriety and price as stumbling blocks to widespread adoption.

“We’re going to see more and more fingerprint sensors out there, but it’s going to be more of the same application,” Jay Meier, VP of Corporate Development at BIO-key said.

Meier, a former Wall St. analyst, says that third-party apps won’t have access to fingerprint data or to fingerprint sensors on smartphones, and that applications will still likely be limited to logging into and locking mobile devices.

“There is a lot of proprietary technology being pushed out into the marketplace, and those might be great for selling a product, but they’re not necessarily the best way to architect an ecosystem,” Meier said.

In terms of new avenues for biometric growth, Meier says there are likely to be some new healthcare applications in the next year, with changing American legislation affecting pharmaceutical prescriptions.

In a recent column on the M2SYS blog, John Trader argues that “the rise of biometric modalities outside of more traditional ones like fingerprinting will be another important aspect of biometrics maturing in 2014. It is well known that consumers prefer using biometric technology not commonly associated with criminals and less invasive than fingerprinting so expect to see a rise in new or lesser known biometric technologies as vendors begin to move away from more traditional modalities.”

On the other side of the spectrum, new analysis from Frost & Sullivan finds that fingerprint recognition will remain the leading biometric technology in consumer electronics for at least the next few years. In addition, the report notes that iris recognition and multimodal biometrics will rapidly grow in the next three years due to their accuracy, although the cost and size of these systems could hinder uptake.

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