Biometric mobile phone security to be worth $161 million in revenue by 2015

Latest forecasts show that biometric mobile phone security products and services will generate just over $30 million in 2011.

Biometric mobile phone security is a subject close to our hearts here at NFC Rumors. We love and hate the technology in equal measures. On one hand, it affords us to be able to protect our sensitive data stored on our ever more powerful NFC smartphones. On the other hand, it will likely be used to track our movements and is in fact a severe privacy concern. Biometric technology could enable a big brother society where we are constantly watched and scanned by governments and marketing companies. If we were politicians (which we are not) we would call for the use of such technology to be regulated, legislated and constricted to certain use cases, with full transparency on those uses and storage of biometric data. But nonetheless, biometric mobile phone security is a positive use for the technology and a new study has been published to show how pervasive it is likely to become by 2015.

Biometric mobile phone security industry projections

The one thing all analysts appear to agree on is that NFC and the mobile wallet are here to stay, but this latest research conducted by Goode Intelligence focuses on biometric mobile phone security. The headline findings of the report is that the biometric mobile phone security market could be worth $161 million by 2015, and to be honest those figures are low for such a huge shift in technology and personal security. This year, biometric mobile phone technology will earn the industry around $30 million dollars and whereas an increase of over $130 million is great growth by 2015 for an emerging industry, it isn’t even close to related new technologies like NFC.

In introducing the biometric mobile phone security study the author, Alan Goode,  has some interesting points:

“Whether it is for protecting the physical device or for providing strong authentication and identity verification for a remote service, such as NFC-based mobile payments, mobile phone-based biometrics can offer a wide variety of solutions – the third factor in the palm of your hand,” said Goode.

Didn’t someone say that “With great power comes great responsibility”? As our smartphones become more and more powerful and convergence continues to become more and more ubiquitous these powerful computers that we carry around require better security and the natural answer to this appears to be biometric mobile phone security.

“Additionally, the recent problem that RSA has experienced with its SecureID product has resulted in a rush for suitable alternatives that are built for the 2010s and not the 1990s. The combination of the consumerisation of IT, where people are accessing IT services and information from a variety of employee-owned and employer-issued devices, plus the modern threat from hackers and cyber criminals necessitates a rethink for authentication and identity verification”

About Biometric mobile phone security growth

“We believe a biometric groundswell is building. The market is currently slow; but pressure is growing. The conditions are ripe for rapid change; for biometrics to move from an ‘interesting concept’ to a ‘must have’ for all smart mobile devices (SMDs),” Goode added.

“Motorola has been heavily marketing the security benefits of using biometrics (fingerprint sensor) to protect its latest Android smartphone, the Atrix. It is even being called the ‘James Bond’ smartphone,” said Alan Goode, author of the report and founder of Goode Intelligence.

Whatever your view point is on biometrics and its less desirable uses, the fact is we increasingly and personally need biometric mobile phone security to protect our identities, money and account details. The industry is set for growth and the Goode Intelligence biometric mobile phone security analyst report gives an in-depth view in to the how and why.