Maxine Most of Acuity Market Intelligence noted that “banning technology’s like banning books; you just can’t do it. The cat is out of the bag,” and advocated for expanded public-private partnerships to build standards to address concerns.

As soon as 2016, Acuity Market Intelligence was estimating that there were 750 million smartphones on the market featuring biometric technology – largely in the form of fingerprint sensors – and by the end of the next year, fingerprint sensors were considered a more or less standard feature on mid-range and premium smartphones. For Acuity’s part, the renowned market research firm predicted in its 2016 report that 100 percent of all smartphones shipped in 2018 would have biometric technology – and then another big move from Apple prompted a mainstream modality shift that changed everything.

“The pandemic experience will fundamentally reshape the way business is conducted on a global scale,” writes renowned industry analyst Maxine Most in a new blog post from Acuity Market Intelligence. The post is Most’s take on the bigger trends that are taking shape as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, with digital identity and biometrics poised to play a key role going forward.

Biometric identification holds a lot of promise for unattended retail, but the debate over what companies should do to protect customers' personal privacy has only begun. How soon the unattended retail industry will be able to use the technology's benefits, such as allowing customers to place and pay for orders in seconds, remains uncertain.

The majority of companies offering face recognition technology are pursuing a strategy of showing a unique value proposition, which is unlikely to be effective, according to a new market assessment of the business opportunities for facial recognition has been published by Acuity Market Intelligence.