According to Matia Grossi, Frost & Sullivan's industry analyst, "the market for biometrics products is going to almost triple by 2012 from its 2008 value".  As the level of security breaches and transaction fraud increases, the need for enhanced, secure identification and personal verification technologies increases proportionally. For these reasons, the market for biometrics products in Europe is still growing despite the economic downturn and is supported by governmental, banking, and commercial initiatives.  Currently, the governmental sector occupies 44.5% of the current market share; however, an increasing number of biometric products are being developed for commercial markets, particularly the financial, healthcare, retail and educational sectors.

"The economic recession certainly affected the biometrics market; however, large-scale deployment in government projects and the introduction of biometrics as a time and attendance tool and as a new standard feature in high-end applications have offered solace in these trying times," says Matia Grossi.  "The biometrics market witnessed a dip of 10% in revenues in 2008, but the announcement of new large-scale projects to counterbalance the economic recession is expected to favourably impact the overall biometrics market."

"Historically, the adoption of biometrics has been concentrated in the government sectors but since 2004, there has been a shift in dynamics in the marketplace, with increasing demand from commercial markets, particularly financial, health care, retail, and educational sectors for biometric products" adds Frost & Sullivan analyst, Suja Chellathurai. "The recent inauguration of government identity management projects such as in border control and passport applications in many Western European countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and Sweden has boosted the growth of biometrics market". 

Although many of the applications at the moment centre around fingerprint based technologies, there are multiple established and emerging solutions that are finding their space in the market.  Established technologies that are gaining momentum include face recognition; both 2 Dimensional (2D) and 3 Dimensional (3D), iris scans, hand geometry, vascular scans (palm vein scans), and retina scans.  Upcoming physiological technologies include skinprints, earlobe scans, brain fingerprints, and DNA recognition.  Technologies based on behavioural patterns, such as voice recognition, signature scans, keyboard and mouse patterns, gait (walk patterns), and body odour recognition are also in the development process.

Fingerprint technology is the most established and widespread form of biometrics.  It is used extensively for both physical and logical access control by governmental and corporate entities and has a wide range of uses in law enforcement.  It is also used by the banking and finance industry to prevent identity fraud in online banking and at ATM cash points.  The main advantages of fingerprint technology are that it is the most economical biometric technology and its small storage space, reduced power requirements, and resistive nature to temperature and background lighting make it an ideal technology to be deployed in a range of logical and physical access environments.  Its major disadvantages are that this technology cannot enrol elderly people, manual labourers, and certain ethnic and demographic groups due to their low-quality fingerprints and hygienic concerns.  Fingerprint technology is anticipated to be deployed in a broader scale in the upcoming future. 

The prevalence of other biometrics technologies is also expected to grow.  Iris, retina and vascular scans have proven to be the most accurate, but also the most expensive.  The trend towards implementing two or more authentication methods (bimodal or multimodal biometrics) is on the rise.  Many EU countries such as Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Hungary, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Serbia, Slovakia and UK, have been issuing ePassports since 2006 which bear automated facial recognition and intend to support automated fingerprint recognition by the end of 2009.  Bimodal and multimodal biometrics are expected to become standard in high-end applications in government, border control and airport security by 2020.

Technologies still in the nascent stages of development are showing great potential.  DNA biometrics in particular has huge potential for large-scale applications in the next 15 to 20 years. According to Matia Grossi: "The integration of iris and retina recognition biometric systems and 2D and 3D face recognition systems are anticipated to gain wide adoption in the next seven to ten years with their low error rates. Multimodal biometrics such as fingerprint, face, and iris are expected to become the standard biometric for high-end applications in government, border control and airport security by 2020." The merger and acquisition of various biometric vendors stand as proof of this trend. Clear indicators of this are the large number of mergers and acquisitions observed on the market in the recent years.

If you would like to have more information about the Biometrics in Europe and/or about Automatic Identification & Security please contact Joanna Lewandowska at joanna.lewandowska@frost.com. Please include your company name, query and contact information.