Beyond Authentication: Access Control, Body-Worn Video, and Surveillance Cameras Boost Biometrics Market

Ever-present and multi-faceted threats to public safety in governmental settings, the ongoing chase for more intelligently secure smart home, and lackluster user authentication options in workforce management systems will boost biometric hardware revenues to US$19 billion by 2024, according to global tech market advisory firm, ABI Research. Access Control, Body-Worn Cameras (BWC) and surveillance cameras will see the most growth in the biometric market between now and 2024.

Public safety, law enforcement and anti-terrorist governmental mandates will greatly enhance surveillance camera shipments reaching 135 million in 2024. Body-Worn Cameras (BWCs) including bodycams and glass-cams are primarily driven by new biometric and video surveillance law enforcement initiatives worldwide and will experience an impressive growth with 1.6 million-unit shipments in the same year. Biometric Locks faced significant problems in the past due inaccurate matching algorithms but recent demand from APAC forced the technology to catch up boasting over 24 million biometric lock shipments in 2024 

“The government, civil, law enforcement, and border market cluster will generate the largest share of biometric revenues for the foreseeable future driven by a versatile range of devices including ID/Authentication, BWCs, and surveillance cameras,” explains Dimitrios Pavlakis, Industry Analyst at ABI Research. Enterprise, banking and finance, consumer, and healthcare market revenues follow behind – each with unique characteristics and dependencies that shape biometric offerings in their respective verticals. “Fingerprint devices traditionally dominated implementations across most markets and, for the most part, that trend will continue, but technological evolution and security requirements have brought forth a few interesting exceptions,” says Pavlakis. These exceptions include continuous face recognition for enterprise mobility, biometric locks, and indoor/outdoor surveillance cameras for smart home security and occupant monitoring. Iris-based authentication is used in applications where contactless access control is required, or users’ characteristics are partially concealed due to clothing or gear (e.g., healthcare, manufacturing).

Innovative hardware vendors like Gemalto Cogent, Dermalog, and Secugen are investing in developing more advanced biometric solutions geared toward government, civil, and law enforcement. Fujitsu continues to lead the market with pioneering vein and finger-vein biometric readers with an emphasis on banking and finance applications. All-round vendors like HID Global continue to invest in acquiring more companies, thus expanding their reach across multiple vendors. Other vendors like BIO-Key and IriTech hone their skills in enterprise physical and logical access control. “The penetration rate of biometric technologies is increasing steadily across many connected IoT verticals and biometrics vendors need to adapt their market strategy and restructure their pricing models to tackle the regulatory challenges that lie ahead,” Pavlakis concludes.

These findings are from ABI Research’s Biometric Technologies and Applications market data report. This report is part of the company’s Digital Security research service, which includes research, data, and analyst insights. Market Data spreadsheets are composed of deep data, market share analysis, and highly segmented, service-specific forecasts to provide detailed insight where opportunities lie.