Despite the rise of facial recognition in smartphones, the fingerprint sensor market will continue to see substantial growth over the coming years, according to a new market forecast from ABI Research.

The firm predicts that the fingerprint sensor market will see 1.26 billion shipments this year, and that this ties into a predicted CAGR of 10.3 percent from 2018 to 2023. This won’t come anywhere close to the CAGR of 26.9 percent expected for facial recognition over the same period, but it does suggest that fingerprint biometrics aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.

In the mobile sector, some of this continuing growth will be driven by innovations like in-display fingerprint scanning. But overall growth in the fingerprint biometrics market will also be helped along by new applications in areas such as smart and connected cars.

On that note, while many are expecting a booming market for the emerging biometric payment cards concept, ABI Research is a bit more cautious about how quickly this market will gain traction. “Although most of the supporting technology has indeed reached critical mass there are still a few pricing and operational issues that currently keep many projects in the pilot phase,” explained Industry Analyst Dimitrios Pavlakis in ABI Research’s new forecast.

Nevertheless, biometric payment cards featuring embedded fingerprint sensors are expected to see “significant growth from 2021 onwards,” according to ABI Research’s report, which credits Gemalto, IDEMIA, FPC, IDEX, NEXT Biometrics, Zwipe, and Smartmatic for positioning themselves as key players in this area.

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