Facial Recognition Market - Growth, Trends, and Forecasts (2020 - 2025)

The facial recognition market was valued at USD 4.4 billion in 2019, and it is projected to be valued at USD 10.9 billion by 2025, registering a CAGR of 17.6% over the forecast period from 2020 to 2025. Facial recognition has been gaining traction in recent times, owing to its benefits over traditional surveillance techniques, like biometrics. Governments worldwide have been investing significant resources in the facial recognition technology, among which the United States and China are the leading adopters. China is one of the major consumers and exporters of the facial recognition technology, as the law and enforcement, along with various government bodies in the country, adopted surveillance technologies. Currently, the country has the most extensive public surveillance system. According to Comparitech, in China, the number of CCTV cameras ranges from 200 million to 626 million by 2020.

• Furthermore, in March 2020, India approved the deployment of its Automated Facial Recognition System (AFRS) across the nation by early 2021, allowing facial biometrics to be extracted from video and CCTV which will be matched with the image of individuals' photos whose identity information are housed in a database by the National Crime Records Bureau under the purview of the Minister of State for Home Affairs. Also, the Indian government's Aadhaar project is one of the largest biometric databases globally, and it is currently held by over 95% of the country's population, which is over 1.3 billion. The UIDAI contains a citizen's fingerprint, facial recognition, and iris. Currently, citizens in the country are actively using the technology for authentication, primarily to avail of various government benefits, processes, and facilities.
• Government initiatives are expected to contribute to the significant growth of such technologies. For instance, the US government is planning to reshape airport security through facial recognition, to register and identify the visitors. Additionally, several North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) member banks mandated the use of facial and voice recognition technologies for online identity verification. Companies have been collaborating with federal governments to implement the technology for their surveillance and identity management. The Chinese e-commerce giant, Alibaba, invested USD 600 million in SenseTime, a Hong Kong-based company that provides facial recognition software to businesses and governments across China.
• The adoption of facial recognition in the automotive industry is expected to gain traction over the forecast period, as the application of the technology is not only in access control of the vehicle but also for safety, as enterprises in the market are looking to incorporate the solution to track driver and passenger behavior by monitoring their emotions. Recently, Accenture, Affectiva, and Faurecia partnered to develop a car cabin for passenger vehicles. Faurecia and Accenture are using 'Connected Car Lab' in reinventing consumer driving experience. The technology leverages Affectiva's Automotive AI to monitor the driver's emotional and cognitive states and passengers from facial and vocal expressions. In addition to automotive applications, the adoption of technology on personal computers/laptops is expected to augment the demand over the coming years further.
• The increasing use of technology in the different end-user industries is expected to expand the market over the coming years. The applications are increasing in healthcare, automotive, smart home, access control, and many more. Moreover, during the COVID-19 outbreak in China, authorities have used facial recognition, combined with infrared cameras, to recognize infected people. Also, Chinese intelligent interaction company, Hanwang Technology, developed a facial recognition technology that can identify people wearing masks, as the use of masks hindered the operation of the technology in the country. Besides, Moscow, Russia, deployed a facial recognition technology for monitoring quarantined coronavirus patients and citizens with travel history outside the country. Such growing applications are expected to influence the facial recognition market positively.