Global fingerprint biometrics revenues drop 22 percent in 2020, says ABI Research

Global biometric device revenues are expected to drop 22 percent to US$6.6 billion before the end of the year, according to a new report from tech market advisory ABI Research.

The drop would be worth $1.8 billion, but the new data highlights that it should be only temporary. In fact, the ABI Research report forecasts that the global biometrics market will regain momentum in 2021, with expected revenues of $40 billion by 2025.

According to Dimitrios Pavlakis, Digital Security Industry Analyst, the current decline in the biometrics market landscape can be linked to three separate kinds of issues: governmental, commercial, and technological.

“First, they have been instigated primarily due to economic reforms during the crisis which forced governments to constrain budgets and focus on damage control, personnel well-being, and operational efficiency.”

In other words, governments around the world had to delay or cancel many fingerprint-based applications requiring user, citizen and patient registration.

The second order of issues would be related to commercial on-premise applications and access control, as the number of remote workers increased dramatically since the beginning of the year.

“Lastly, hygiene concerns due to contact-based fingerprint technologies pummeled biometrics revenues forcing a sudden drop in fingerprint shipments worldwide,” Pavlakis added.

However, the analyst also clarified that the pandemic has also sparked the need for new biometrics applications.

Among these would be mobility and logical access control using biometrics as part of multi-factor authentication (MFA) for remote workers, which according to Pavlakis could become permanent information technology authentication measures in the long term.

“This will improve biometrics-as-a-service (BaaS) monetization and authentication models down the line.”

The ABI Research’s Biometric Technologies and Applications market data report also mentions biometrics applications for smart cities.

“Future smart city infrastructure investments will now factor in additional surveillance,” Pavlakis explained, “[as well as] real-time behavioral analytics, and face recognition for epidemiological research, monitoring, and emergency response endeavors.”

Article Topics

ABI Research  |  biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  consumer electronics  |  fingerprint biometrics  |  fingerprint readers  |  government purchasing  |  market report