COVID-19 Forces Global Fingerprint Revenues to Drop 22% in 2020
In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, global biometric device revenues are expected to drop 22 percent to $6.6 billion, according to a recent report from global tech market advisory ABI Research. The entire biometrics market, however, will regain momentum in 2021 and is expected to reach approximately $40 billion in total revenues by 2025.
“The current decline in the biometrics market landscape stems from multifaceted challenges from a governmental, commercial and technological nature,” said Dimitrios Pavlakis, digital security industry analyst. “First, they have been instigated primarily due to economic reforms during the crisis which forced governments to constrain budgets and focus on damage control, personnel well-being and operational efficiency. Governments had to delay or temporarily cancel many fingerprint-based applications related to user/citizen and patient registration, physical access control, on-premise workforce management and certain applications in border control or civil, welfare, immigration, law enforcement and correctional facilities. Second, commercial on-premise applications and access control suffered as the rise of the remote workers became the new norm for the first half of 2020. Lastly, hygiene concerns due to contact-based fingerprint technologies pummeled biometrics revenues, forcing a sudden drop in fingerprint shipments worldwide.”