Market research firm ABI Research projects that spending on biometrics technologies for security purposes would reach $7.3 billion by 2013, which will be more than double the project spend of about $3 billion in 2008.  The projection is part of a new study by the firm, more details of which can be found here.

Growth will be driven by increased emphasis on security in both the public and private sectors; equally important is the fact that there has been greater standardization which has enabled the emergence of more interoperable systems. The key biometrics advancements have been in the area of face, iris, hand, and speech recognition systems. Meanwhile fingerprint recognition system will continue to be the dominant biometric measurement system.

On this topic, the article Biometrics- A view of the future by John Davies, MD of TDSi presents quite an indepth view of the potential impact of future developments in biometrics on the security industry as a whole.