According to Acuity Market Intelligence, revenues stemming from the mobile biometric marketplace will reach $33.3 billion annually by the year 2020. The growth is massive, with revenue from devices, transactions and apps growing at a CAGR of 90 percent.
“Mobility is the driving force that will unleash the long awaited biometric revolution,“ says Acuity principal Maxine Most.
The projected $33 billion is broken down in Acuity’s latest research by segment. According to the firm, $6 billion in revenue will be generated by biometric sensors, $6.8 billion through biometrically secured payment and non-payment transactions, and a whopping $20 billion in annual revenues from direct purchase and software development fees resulting from 4 billion biometric app downloads.
“Biometrics are a natural fit for the smart mobile devices we literally hold onto nearly every waking hour,” says Most. “The explosion in the use of smart devices over the past five years, along with anticipated growth over the next five – especially in developing economies where sub $100 smart phones have begun to alter the mobile landscape – will bring biometrics into the daily lives of half the global population. By 2020, 100 percent of smart mobile devices will include embedded biometric sensors as a standard feature.”
Smartphone based biometrics, whether based around an embedded sensor or downloaded software, are presenting the connected world with secure and convenient password alternatives. In 2013, with Apple’s launch of Touch ID on its iPhone 5S, biometric strong authentication began to reach the mainstream.
Now, with the next generation applications that resulted from Touch ID and its competitors – specifically in the case of mobile wallet technology – as well as the predicted growing importance of the Internet of Things, it is beginning to look like we’re quickly on our way to a future of biometric ubiquity. Indeed, with Most’s prediction that 100 percent of smart mobile devices will ship with embedded biometric sensors as a standard feature, that future looks a mere five years away.
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January 27, 2015 – by Peter B. Counter
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