Facial recognition to grow by more than 26 percent through 2025

Nov 2, 2018, 1:09 pm EDT | Chris Burt

Technological advancements in facial recognition biometrics, more mobile devices equipped with cameras and the rising popularity of media cloud services are among the drivers that will push the image recognition market to $86 billion in annual revenue by 2025, according to a new report from Allied Market Research.

The report, which focuses on various aspects of the Image Recognition Market from 2018 to 2025, says the market generated $17.91 billion in 2017, and will grow at a 21.8 percent CAGR.

While object detection is the largest technology segment, with 33 percent in 2017, facial recognition is forecasted to have the highest growth rate, with a 26.1 percent CAGR, with both law-enforcement and non-law enforcement applications increasing. The non-contact process and easy deployment of facial recognition makes it widely preferred over other biometric modalities, Allied says.

A 2017 report from Technavio suggested the global facial recognition market will grow by 23 percent from 2017 to 2021.

The high cost of system installation is expected to be a significant barrier to market growth, while high demand in the healthcare industry and regulations mandating the use of image recognition products are expected to provide market opportunities.

The cloud segment made up more than 55 percent of the market in 2017, and is expected to grow faster than on-premise deployments. Applications discussed in the report include scanning and imaging, security and surveillance, and marketing and advertising. Image search had the largest application share in 2017, however, and augmented reality is predicted to be the fastest-growing application.

North America contributed nearly half of the global market’s revenue in 2017, but the Asia-Pacific region will have the highest growth, at a CAGR of 25.4 percent, due to anti-terrorism and e-governance projects.