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Asia-Pacific: Fastest Growing Biometrics Market Worldwide

United States remains the largest biometrics market.

The eyes have it in the Asia Pacific region, the fastest growing market for biometrics technology.

Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), London, United Kingdom, a market intelligence and analysis firm, estimates the biometric market in the Asia-Pacific region is worth $1.1 billion this year and will reach $3.3 billion by 2025. The projected increase represents a compound annual growth rate of 11.3 percent.

China and India are the biggest contributors to this growth, occupying more than half of the regional market share, according to SDI. Major programs in those countries include China’s electronic identification effort and the Aadhaar project by the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which is based on fingerprints and iris scans. Japan, Australia, South Korea and Indonesia are also boosting expenditure on biometrics with a focus on strengthening national security. These nations are enhancing border controls by adopting solutions such as automated biometric identification, e-gates, mobile fingerprint scanners and fingerprint verification systems for foreigners.

Although SDI projects growth in the U.S. biometric market to be slower than in emerging markets with an annual growth rate of 7.1 percent, the country still remains the largest market, with a projected expenditure of $25.5 billion up to 2025. “We expect the United States Visitor and Immigration Status Indicator Technology (US VISIT) program, initiated by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2014, to be the largest biometrics program with an estimated investment of $4 billion. The program, which incorporates fingerprint, facial, iris and signature recognition, will enhance the security of citizens and visitors, and facilitate travel and trade,” says Bharathi Bajaj, an SDI analyst.

The report also finds that rather than using the traditional unimodal biometric solution, which is faced with challenges of variability, non-universality and data quality, governments and law enforcement agencies are incorporating multimodal biometric measures. “This approach will create a spoof-proof framework and increase accuracy of identification along with enhanced physical access controls,” Bharathi says.