Biometrics providers must adopt new models to leverage IoT monetization opportunities: ABI Research

Players in the global biometrics industry must break away from certain traditional and inflexible models so as to better align with monetization opportunities in the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem, a recent study by technology advisory body ABI Research suggests.

The findings of ABI Research’s Transformative Horizons: Biometrics in the IoT report indicate that biometric players currently face significant opposition breaking into the multifaceted and use-case specific IoT environment, even as IoT connections look to reach 23.7 billion by 2026. The report however acknowledges that requirements for connectivity and digitization, along with higher demand for intelligence will help advance the biometrics market in a wider range of IoT applications.

According to highlights of the study, the current misalignment is caused by a number of factors including a lack of IT security investments in the IoT ecosystem, difficulties demonstrating monetization opportunities for biometric and security service providers, complications faced by biometric vendors to break the hardware-based revenue model, as well as resistance against BaaS (biometrics-as-a-service).

“Biometric service providers do not need to re-invent the wheel to get a bigger slice of the IoT pie, but they also must not cling to traditional, inflexible models. They must prove to IoT players that biometrics can offer intelligent solutions for targeted applications, demonstrate the ease of device deployment, system integration and interoperability with centralized platforms, and showcase pricing model modularity and versatility,” Dimitrios Pavlakis, security analyst at ABI Research, said of the situation.

Pavlakis said it would make little sense for ‘IoT’ to be considered in its entirety by most biometric vendors, just like most IoT players are not drawn to biometric authentication. IoT applications in smart homes, connected vehicles, government, surveillance, casinos and other areas have different requirements, regulatory responsibilities, and monetization strategies.

He thus suggested that “Biometric players need to look past standard user authentication service offerings to penetrate the highly complex and multifaceted IoT ecosystem,” and “…should not look into IoT applications to solve problems that do not exist, but rather to add intelligence that IoT players did not know they could use.”

ABI forecast a 22 percent drop in biometric device revenues in 2020, followed by a bounce-back in 2021, in a report last year.

Article Topics

ABI Research  |  authentication  |  biometrics  |  biometrics at the edge  |  biometrics research  |  IoT  |  market report