The global market for biometrics technologies and applications will grow from about $13.7 billion in 2015 to more than $30 billion in 2021, according to market forecaster ABI Research. The demand from within consumer electronics, particularly smartphones, will help drive this growth of 118 percent. Annual embedded fingerprint sensors are forecast to reach two billion by 2021 at compound annual growth rate of 40 percent over the period. That equates to shipments of about 266 million units in 2015 and of 372 million units in 2016.
In addition to consumer demand for protection there is increased surveillance and ABI reckons that by 2021 one in three surveillance cameras will be IP-connected to open up pathways for biometrics and analysis. The North America and Asia-Pacific regions dominate the sales of biometrics but ABI Research said that Latin America and the Middle East are expected to boom in biometric implementations for banking, personal finance, governmental and security applications. Technologies include embedded sensors in consumer electronics and payment cards; four-finger, iris, and facial recognition in smartphones; and vein recognition in ATMs. Payment giant Mastercard is putting an emphasis on facial recognition.
