China Fingerprint Identification Chip Market Report, 2007

The principles of finger identification are similar to those of other biological identification technologies. It uses fingerprints of human body to distinguish and identify individual identity. Among all biological identification technologies, the fingerprint identification technology is the most mature and most widely used. This is because it is very simple for people to collect fingerprints and fingerprint identification is highly accurate, only following iris identification by a gap of one millionth.

In 2007-2012 Global Biometric Identification Market Report issued by IBG, scale of global biometric identification market in the next five years is estimated. And it's also estimated that it will exceed USD 3 billion in 2007, reach USD 3.8 billion in 2008 and exceed USD 7.4 billion in 2012.

Meanwhile, market shares of global fingerprint identification technology in 2007 are also reported to reach 58.9% in the report (including AFIS and non-AFIS fingerprint application), being far more than that in 2006 and far exceeding that of other biometric identification technologies. Undoubtedly, it has showed that acceptance and application of fingerprint identification has stepped into a "fast lane".

According to the statistics of the domestic sale and export of the domestic biological identification products, the sales revenue of China biological identification market amounted to about RMB 860 million in 2006, and more than 97% was from the biological identification products, the domestic equipment was in the main stream, as well as a large number of products were exported. Calculating by the sales volume, the export accounted for about 28%.

From the prospective of the life cycle of market and industry, China biological identification and industry has finished the lead-in period and the most of the growth period, and going on the mature period gradually. In 2006, the domestic biological identification products not only dominated the domestic market, but also walked towards to the international market.

The fingerprint identification technology and product still situated the leading position in China biological identification industry, besides the palm identification, the other identification technologies all situated in the preliminary popularization period. While face identification and iris identification both have achieved the dramatic development and promotion, and they will have the very new market behavior in the following one to two years. According to the analysis, there was not much change of China biological identification market application in 2006 to previous years, the fingerprint lock, attendance and access control still played the leading role. The fingerprint door lock product was still the biological identification products with the largest export volume. While most of the fingerprint identification attendance and access control equipment were sold to overseas market with OEM due to lack of its own market channel now.

It is forecasted that China fingerprint identification market scale will remain the rapid increase in 2007. and the growth margin will reach 60% to RMB 960 million, and it will reach RMB 4.651 billion in 2011.

The fingerprint NB, fingerprint U disk, and fingerprint door lock became the best sellers in 2006, and their sales volume had increased dramatically, while the intelligence card with the good combination of biological identification technology had been wiped out basically. There were nearly 20 manufacturers that launched fingerprint NB successively in 2005, covering the mainstream NB manufacturers. The former PCD division of IBM issued the fingerprint NB was regarded as the most important event in the biological identification field by the large the biological identification manufacturers in the world, and in 2006, nearly all the NB brands had launched the fingerprint identification NB products, especially in the middle and high-end commercial computer field, while the desktop also started to focus on the fingerprint identification system. Tsinghua Tongfang issued the New Chaoyang series of PC with Microchip, which is the beginning of the fingerprint identification PC, and then more and more fingerprint identification PC and NB products will be launched. The fingerprint U disk was the fingerprint product with the largest change in the product shape in 2005, since the main-controlling chip manufacturers strengthened the R&D solution (there are 7 or 8 mature solutions in China now), it launched the virtual drive can install the main-controlling chip automatically, and then the usability of the product strengthened a lot. Meanwhile, the average price of the fingerprint sensor had dropped to USD 5 from USD 15, so the cost of the fingerprint U disk was just RMB 100 higher than the common U disk (with the same capacity), and it is possible to expand the large scale. In the aspect of the fingerprint door lock, although the technology of the domestic fingerprint door lock was comparatively backward, especially in the field of the combination of the fingerprint chip and control circuit, while the market recognition was improving and the export was improved rapidly.

It is acknowledged that for the increasing demand for safety of personal data, information and capital, and imrpovement of size, cost, accuracy and technology of fingerprint identification sensor, fingerprint identification products have extended form traditional attendance, door lock and lockfast to consumer electronics field with large shipment such as mobile handset, desktop/notebook, and PC peripheral equipments, which have a large group of followers. So it is estimated that China fingerprint identification products will be increasingly applied.