Market research firm ABI Research has released some new findings and predictions on the governmental biometrics market. The firm expects governmental biometric expenditures to reach $8.6 billion USD by the year 2020.
In a statement, ABI Research Analyst Dimitrios Pavlakis pointed out that while the consumer electronics and enterprise segments of the global biometrics market are on the rise, “governmental spending still forms the largest portion of biometric expenditures.” He emphasized applications in access control, national ID systems, border control, law enforcement, and work force management as key drivers of the spending.
Despite the huge growth forecasted, ABI nevertheless points out major roadblocks in certain market segments. For example, national ID projects “may come to a halt due to lack of proper large-scale planning and coordination among governmental agencies”, and indeed, we’ve seen a bit of this in India’s Aadhaar program – the most ambitious national biometric ID initiative in the world – as certain government agencies have lagged in complying with some of the new standards. The same can be said of the other major roadblock identified by ABI, that “biometric registration might have various implications across different regions depending on the culture and governmental infrastructure” – which seems to be at least part of the problem in a sputtering initiative to link Aadhaar with a government employment program.
Still, there’s much more good news than bad. Among the “opportunities and enablers” identified by ABI are the increasing prevalence of security protocols in protection intellectual property, and cloud computing, which could prove ever more important as its used to manage the myriad devices being enveloped in the growing Internet of Things.
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April 16, 2015 – by Alex Perala
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