Frost & Sullivan has released a new report projecting the Asia Pacific region to see major growth in the biometrics industry due to an increasing number of security threats seen recently. The 2009 revenues in the biometrics market for the Asia Pacific region were over $165 million, but Frost & Sullivan project that number to hit $700.7 million by 2015.
The report specifies countries such as India where biometrics appears to be well on its way as a standard technology being used for security purposes in government buildings, military installations, laboratories and hospitals thanks to government backing.
Other aspects they attribute to the growing revenues in the region they attribute to public awareness and acceptance of the benefits of biometrics systems and high research and development activity in biometric system development. Despite this, however, the report also touches on aspects that will continue to hinder biometric progress in the region citing things such as high cost of adoption during an economic downturn and the requirements in manpower to get new systems integrated.
A separate and more regionally unique reason why the biometrics market could meet some push back in the Asia Pacific region is due to cultural issues. For instance, in countries such as Japan, Taiwan and South Korea it is considered unhealthy to use a fingerprint scanner that has been used by other strangers.
Despite this, Frost and Sullivan expect to see simple solutions to these issues with biometrics developers creating workarounds utilizing other common technologies such as mobile phones and PDAs as well as a push for other biometric modes such as voice authentication. ![[end]](/resources/bullet/governmentidnews-4.gif)
