The overall biometrics market will continue to see substantial growth, but will also feature a shifting landscape, over the next several years. That’s the prediction of ABI Research, which argues that by 2021 the market will reach a value of $30 billion as its primary revenues shift from the government sector to banking and consumer electronics.

Those sectors will see growth rates of 12 and 19 percent, respectively, as device OEMs and major financial services companies start to invest heavily in the technology. And ABI Research says that fingerprint sensors continue to be a major force, with shipments forecast to approach two billion by 2021, reflecting an overall growth rate of 44 percent. While the modality is currently most prevalent on smartphones, going forward it will appear in a range of Internet of Things devices, from smart cars to wearables.

While biometric technologies are generally used to help improve security for users and organizations, ironically, ABI Research sees their increasing deployment as a security risk in itself. In a statement announcing its latest forecasts, ABI Research analyst Dimitrios Pavlakis points to last year’s OPM data breach as a warning to the industry, suggesting it could be “a turbulent prelude on what is to come and disrupt the biometric security market, unless OEMs and platform providers focus more on increasing protection rather than decreasing cost.” This is undoubtedly an important point to consider even as many experts continue to look to biometric technology as thekey to security for the Internet of Things.

—

April 25, 2016 – by Alex Perala