Sub-$5 Fingerprint Sensors Will Drive Adoption

In its report titled Biometric Fingerprint Equipment Market Opportunities, Strategies, and Forecasts, 2005 to 2010, WinterGreen Research Inc. says that demand for granular, intelligent security systems is driving the market for biometric systems.

Combined with software, biometrics (that is, authentication based on physical or behavioral characteristics) provides increasingly advanced security. New middleware sports highly evolved voice features that are helping biometrics to achieve market penetration.

Hardware tokens, the bedrock of Internet security systems, are set to be replaced by fingerprint identification systems as the latter become more cost efficient, says the report.

Standards efforts by the International Biometric Industry Association (IBIA) and the BioAPI consortium are driving growth. And Microsoft, by integrating biometric authentication technology into its next version of Windows, is sending a message that this technology is ready for widespread adoption.

The law enforcement markets are anticipated to continue to grow at a rapid pace, joined soon by commercial and healthcare markets. The availability of sensors at a cost below $5 is the most significant market driver.

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