International. According to global technology market advisory firm ABI Research, the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to cause a significant pullback in biometric device shipments, creating a significant revenue drop of $2 billion over the course of 2020.
At the same time, the pandemic has given rise to new identification and surveillance needs, stimulating new investments in the design of biometric Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms, which will give a boost to the market for facial recognition technologies in the future.
"Biometric contact technologies, such as fingerprint and vein, have taken a substantial hit due to new government regulations targeting contact and proximity interactions. Fingerprint biometrics providers are struggling to maintain strict new hygiene and infectious control protocols. These regulations have been introduced correctly for the safety of users and staff, but they have also affected sales in certain verticals," explains Dimitrios Pavlakis, digital security analyst at ABI Research.
"Physical on-premise access control, user registration, identification, and workforce management systems have been greatly affected in the enterprise and commercial space, but these applications also extended to healthcare, law enforcement, border control, government, the civil sector, and welfare." adds Pavlakis.
While contact-only companies will have additional hurdles to overcome in most markets, some companies have already adapted their solutions that offer contactless fingerprint detection technologies. In addition, fingerprint sensor vendors operating in consumer markets such as FPC and Goodix will be primarily affected by smartphone sales, rather than hygiene concerns, due to the personal nature of user authentication.
The total biometric device market is expected to reach $28.2 billion by 2020, with the government and security market taking a significant hit of $1.1 billion. Sales of fingerprint devices are also expected to decline in 2020 by $1.2 billion.
However, not everything is gloomy. "AI biometric companies are adapting to the biological threat. Currently, biometric technologies are undergoing a forced rather than an organic evolution, with ai biometric signatures leading the charge," says Pavlakis. "New IoT and smart city-centric applications will enable new streams of data and analytics, monitoring infection rates in real time, forcing new data-sharing initiatives, and even applying AI models to predict future outbreaks."
Face and iris recognition has become the focus of attention as key technologies that enable authentication, identification and surveillance operations for users and citizens wearing protective hats, face masks or with partially covered faces. These elements that were the undoing of facial recognition algorithms in the past have now been integrated into the value proposition of algorithm developers, followed by increased investment momentum aimed at surveillance, video analytics, and smart city applications. Temperature and fever detection technologies using infrared technologies have also been modernized in access and border control, while biometric telemedicine applications are providing medical assistance to consumers and patients remotely. Investments in artificial intelligence have been mainly instigated by leading Chinese companies such as SenseTime, Megvii, Alibaba and Baidu.
These findings come from ABI Research's COVID-19 Impact Assessment in the Application Analysis report of the Biometrics market. This report is part of the company's Digital Security research service, which includes research, data, and ABI Insights.
Source: ABI Research.
