Biometric research: Reports review mobile, health care and emerging markets
25 April, 2014
category: Biometrics, Corporate, Government, Health
Research and Markets released three biometric research reports on different aspects of the market. The reports look at the use of the identification technology with mobile devices, health care and in emerging markets.
Mobile
In the mobile report, the consultancy notes that the market is seeing increased consolidation. Existing vendors and new entrants are taking the acquisitive route to either enter the market or broaden their portfolio of offerings. For instance, Apple acquired AuthenTec for $356 million in 2012. The acquisition helped Apple attain all its patents for biometric security in mobile devices. 3M completed the acquisition of Cogent Inc. in December 2010 for$943 million. Cogent develops biometric recognition systems that allow government and businesses to identify individuals by their fingers, palms, faces, and irises.
The mobile biometrics market has several drivers. One such is the increasing use of personal devices for financial transactions. Financial institutions are encouraging the use of mobile banking and online financial transactions, thereby increasing the need for high-level security. Since the use of biometrics in mobile devices helps provide high-level security, there has been an increase in the adoption of biometrics in mobile devices.
Key challenges in the market are the availability of other inexpensive authentication technologies. Besides mobile biometrics, there is a high availability of solutions such as token-based two-factor authentication, password authentication, and software authentication in the market. As these solutions are relatively inexpensive and easy to operate, they are finding greater acceptance among individual consumers.
Health care
Analysts forecast the global biometrics market in the health care industry to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 32% between 2013-2018. One of the factors contributing to this market growth is the high adoption of biometrics by hospital managements.
The global biometrics market in the health care has also been witnessing a rapid technological advancement. However, the strong competition from inexpensive authentication technologies could pose a challenge to the growth of this market.
The report covers the Americas, and the EMEA and APAC regions; it also covers the Global Biometrics market landscape and its growth prospects in the coming years.
One of the trends witnessed in the market is the increasing number of mergers and acquisitions, which is expected to continue in the future. Both existing vendors and new entrants prefer the acquisitive route to either enter the market or broaden their portfolio of offerings.
For instance, Safran completed the acquisition of biometric solution provider L-1 Identity Solutions in the second quarter of 2011 for $1 billion.
Some drivers contributing to the health care biometrics market is the high adoption of biometrics by hospital management. Lately, there has been a substantial increase in the adoption of biometrics by hospitals. They are increasingly adopting biometrics to keep track of doctors’ activities and to secure patient records.
New markets, applications
The overall biometric market is increasing with a compound annual growth rate of 17.6% from 2014 to 2020. The major applications for the biometric market are travel and immigration and government. Fingerprint biometric is the major modality while voice has the highest growth potential, followed by iris recognition.
The demand for biometric technologies has increased in recent years because of rise in the number of terrorist activities, coupled with increased data breaches, which have raised concerns regarding the national security. Biometric technologies are used in several verticals such as consumer electronics, government organizations, airports, corporations, and so on, where security remains a prime concern.
Biometric technology market can be categorized into different applications such as government, travel and immigration, banking and finance, consumer electronics, home security, commercial security and health care. The most common application areas in the field of biometric technology are government, banking, finance, travel and immigration, and defense.
The identification technology can be superior to traditional passwords/PINs as these are easily guessed, forgotten, or copied and tokens can be stolen or misplaced. Biometric technology helps in preventing theft, as the information is stored in the form of a digital record in a database making it very difficult to reconstruct, decrypt, or manipulate.
This report describes the market trends, drivers, and challenges of the biometric technology market and forecasts the biometric technology market from 2014 to 2020, based on the applications of the biometric technology and geography.
