Facial Recognition Market Research Report—Global Forecast till 2030

Impact of COVID-19 on the Global Facial Recognition Market

Facial recognition is a technology that is capable of verifying or identifying a person from a video frame or digital image. It captures the image of an individual and uses it to identify the person by applying facial analytics in conjunction with the existing database. It is a biometric application, which is extensively used to enhance security and verify people’s identities at places such as airports and shopping malls. Besides, this technology is widely adopted in smartphones as a phone unlocking feature. It is also used for signing in into various mobile applications, as well as for payment verification. The COVID-19 pandemic has positively impacted the facial recognition market. The significant challenge faced by every country during the COVID-19 pandemic is the sudden surge in the number of infected people, which has pushed the healthcare systems to their limits, thus raising the risk of a complete shutdown. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries have adopted the facial recognition technology to curb the spread of the virus by evaluating higher temperatures of potentially infected persons or tracking quarantine evaders in crowds. Besides, as most of the employees are working from home during the pandemic, organizations that are resuming operations are expected to stop the use of fingerprint biometrics as a security protocol to enter buildings owing to the increasing concerns regarding the spread of the virus. Precautionary measures have been imposed by the majority of the governments to maintain social distancing to stop the spread of the virus. Therefore, in such a situation, facial recognition-based attendance systems are expected to be beneficial. There has been a significant decrease in the use of other biometric technologies that rely on touch-based sensors, which is boosting the adoption of facial recognition technology.

The use of facial recognition technology is expected to be closely monitored by regulators. However, surveillance technologies have been observed to be increasingly altering facial recognition during the epidemic. People are wearing masks, which cover half of their faces when they go out in public. Therefore, the existing facial recognition systems are unable to register all of the facial features required to identify a person. For instance, unlocking a smartphone using facial recognition becomes difficult after wearing a mask. To overcome this challenge, a Chinese facial recognition company, namely Hanwang, has developed a new facial recognition technology that can precisely identify people wearing masks 95% of the time. In addition, another facial recognition firm, Rank One Computing, has developed a new periocular recognition system. This system uses only the eyebrows and eyes to identify a person. The periocular algorithm has been developed as a direct response to the COVID-19 crisis and the increasing use of facial masks. The global facial recognition market is estimated to grow at a significant rate over the forecast period owing to the growing demand for high-end security solutions.

Impact Analysis