The market value of facial recognition solutions is projected to reach $450 million in 2019, up from $230 million in 2015. This represents a compound annual growth rate of 17.97% in the period.
This is according to market research firm TrendForce. It points out facial recognition technology is expected to enjoy accelerated growth over the next five years, as its applications emerge in the government, enterprise, finance, consumer and other market sectors.
Asia-Pacific is going to be the main growth driver of the facial recognition market, and the region presently accounts for almost 60% of the global market.
TrendForce analyst Christy Lin says that compared with fingerprints, human faces have biometric features that cannot be easily duplicated.
"Moreover, facial recognition is likely to be more widely accepted by consumers and has a wider scope of applications. While the technology is primarily used in security and monitoring systems, its application is gradually expanding to other areas, such as smart retail and mobile payment," Lin explains.
Last year, Alipay, the online payment platform under Alibaba, jointly launched a payment verification system with Face ++, a cloud-based facial recognition platform operated by Chinese start-up Megvii. Named "Smile to Pay", this payment verification system lets Alipay users pay for their online shopping simply by taking selfies.
Other major technology companies that have been investing in facial recognition in recent years and hold related technology patents include Microsoft, Google, Apple and Facebook.
Lin notes the current mainstream facial recognition systems, which record and match 2D images of individuals' facial features (ie, eyes, nose, mouth and ears), can still be deceived by regular photos and videos. However, developers are now advancing towards 3D facial recognition.
One major type of 3D facial recognition solutions verifies both the image that a face produces under visible light and the depth of facial features with the help of infrared light, says Lin.
Another common 3D facial recognition technology uses infrared light dots to measure and verify the distances and depths of facial features.
According to Lin, a prominent example of 3D facial recognition technology is the RealSense Camera, a 3D scanning solution jointly developed by Intel and Microsoft.
The RealSense Camera is designed to work with Microsoft's Windows Hello biometric authentication software and uses an infrared laser to capture facial features for record-keeping and verification.
Since more efficient processors will be needed to manage 3D models stored in the databases of facial recognition systems, Intel stands to benefit greatly from developing and promoting products for this application, Lin says.
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