Juniper Research Heralds Rise of Multimodal Mobile Biometrics

Juniper Research is predicting the rise of multimodal mobile biometrics.

In a new report entitled Mobile Biometrics: Consumer Markets, Opportunities & Forecasts 2016-2021, the market research firm acknowledges that while fingerprint scanners are now more or less ubiquitous, the next few years will see the rise of additional biometric modalities like facial and voice recognition. Such technologies are currently deployed on about 190 million mobile devices, Juniper Research says, but that number will rise to 600 million devices by the end of the forecast period.

A big part of these modalities’ appeal is that they don’t need specialized hardware, since they can use the technologies already in place on most mobile devices. But they won’t displace fingerprint scanning; rather, they will help to form multimodal solutions.

The report also predicts the rise of on-device biometric storage, as advocated by the likes of the FIDO Alliance, and that such biometric technologies will increasingly be used for authentication rather than identification. It all points to increasingly strong mobile security for consumers going forward.