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Although revenue and shipment forecasts for biometric technologies vary among market researchers, there is no doubt that the use of these technologies in mobile devices including smartphones and tablets will grow significantly over the next five years across industries and regions.
A new report from Acuity Market Intelligence indicates that the global mobile biometric market will reach $34.6 billion annually by 2020. For sensor manufacturers, this translates into 4.8 billion biometrically enabled smart mobile devices generating $6.2 billion in biometric sensor revenue. It also includes 5.4 billion biometric app downloads that deliver $21.7 billion in annual revenues from direct purchase and software development fees, and 807 billion biometrically secured payment and non-payment transactions worth $6.7 billion in authentication fees.
The report, "The Global Biometrics and Mobility Report: The Convergence of Commerce and Privacy" finds that biometric app annual revenue will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 148 percent over the forecast period from less than $100 million in 2014 to more than $21.7 billion in 2020. Biometric smart device app downloads also will increase significantly from 6.5 million downloads in 2014 to 5.4 billion in 2020. The market researcher also forecasts 4.8 billion biometric mobile devices in circulation in 2020, most containing multiple biometric apps from multiple sources.
"Biometrics is at the center of a firestorm of converging market forces driving the digital identity revolution," says Maxine Most, Acuity Market Intelligence Principal and author of the report, in a statement. "New and complex relationships between identity, mobility, and commerce are redefining global communication and commerce ecosystems and require frictionless, yet highly reliable security."
A Tractica report, “Biometrics for Mobile Devices,” forecasts that shipments of fingerprint readers in mobile devices will surpass 1 billion units annually by 2021, accounting for 34 percent of all smartphone and tablet shipments worldwide. However, the rates will be much higher in North America, said Tractica, with 51 percent of all mobile device shipments including fingerprint sensors by 2021.
“Currently, the use cases for mobile fingerprint readers center on basic authentication for local device access and on-device purchase transactions,” said Bob Lockhart, principal analyst, at Tractica, in a statement. “As penetration rates increase in the future, however, the market will expand to include a variety of additional identification and authentication use cases for banking and financial transactions, government identification, and healthcare applications, among others.”
A new report available from MarketsandMarkets forecasts the fingerprint market to reach $14.5 billion by 2020, up from $5.5 billion in 2014, growing at a CAGR of 17.1 percent over the forecast period. Fingerprint sensor shipments will reach about 10 billion by 2020. The key growth drivers include smartphones, tablets, and electronics consumer goods.
The report, Fingerprint Sensors Market by Type (Swipe & Area), Technology, Material (Optical Prism, Piezoelectric, Capacitive & Adhesives), Application (Mobile, Government, Healthcare, Commercial Security & Others) & Geography - Global Forecast to 2014 – 2020, finds the demand drivers to include mobile applications, government, defense & military, banking & finance, travel & migration, criminal identification, healthcare, smart homes, and commercial security. Other drivers include the quality, cost and reliability of the fingerprint sensors compared to other biometrics technologies, boosting the growth rate in the double digits.
Although North America is currently the largest market for fingerprint sensors, according to the report, APAC is expected to take the lead by 2020, growing at the highest CAGR of 23.6 percent between 2015 and 2020.
