APRIL 14--According to a soon-to-be-released report from Business Communications Company Inc. (Norwalk, CT; www.bccresearch.com), RG-276 The Global Biometrics Market, the global market for biometrics is estimated at $946 million in 2002. It is forecast to grow at an AAGR (average annual growth rate) of 29.1% and total nearly $3.4 billion by 2007.
Among all biometrics technologies, the leading market sector is finger-scan technology. In 2002, sales of $744 million were generated by automated fingerprint recognition systems (AFISs) and non-AFIS products. Despite finger-scan market leadership, based on its having the largest sales revenues, the facial-scan and voice-scan market sectors are expected to show higher AAGRs (for the period 2002 to 2007) than finger scan, that is, 33.3% and 31.5%, respectively, compared with 29.2%. AFIS technology should gradually move from the end of its growth stage to the mature stage of the product life cycle. Increased sales should come from the facial-scan and voice-scan sectors as they have yet to achieve their full sales potential.
At the lower end of the growth scale are iris and retina scans, with AAGRs of 18.8% and 19.5%, respectively, for the period 2002 to 2007. A key restriction to their growth is the absence of competition. Both scan sectors are characterized by the dominance of one active vendor in each case. Small sales and limited applications are other characteristics of the segments.
Despite these comparatively slow-moving technologies, biometrics markets generally are poised for continual growth from 2002 to 2007 and for the foreseeable future.
