New, clear-headed research on the biometric industry

Finding some confident-sounding source of biometric blather on the Internet is easy.  Everyone and their brother, it sometimes seems, has a half-baked opinion about the return on investment of biometric technologies, the value proposition of biometric readers, or that the market will finally arrive for retinal scanners.  That's the way it seems, until you talk to Maxine Most, founder of Acuity Market Intelligence.

Max has put together the definitive view of the current state of the biometrics industry titled The Future of Biometrics: Market Analysis, Segmentation & Forecasts. The report is described as "Insight into the Trends, Drivers & Opportunities that will Shape the Industry through 2020."  I think her research is just what the doctor ordered - bringing cool, well-researched facts into a conversation that is downright Pentacostal in its emotional fervor.

The report covers important questions such as:

• What are the forces - like globalization, population mobility, and proliferation of mobile devices - shaping the evolution of the market?
• Which industries and applications hold the most promise for biometric development?
• How will the technology evolve and impact overall market development?
• How will the most substantial opportunities for industry players evolve?

The report's market segmentation is mapped across four key areas: physical access, logical access, identity confirmation and surveillance. I think that's the right approach for understanding the importance and impact of biometrics, as well as putting the vendor hyperbole in context.