What's the problem with the biometric market and what will it take to solve it?
Despite the Compaq breakthrough a year ago (and persistent optimistic rumors on the threads since), it doesn't look to me like the biometric mass market has begun to take off. We haven't seen more Compaq like deals. We haven't even seen a followup deal with more Compaq divisions.
Why is that?
A couple of experts I've been in contact with suggest there is a chicken-and-egg problem here. The necessary applications don't get deployed for lack of hardware, and the hardware doesn't sell for lack of deployed applications. In other words, how does Compaq sell all those fingerscanners when there's no mass market application for them to hook up to? They aim toward corporatewide systems, but that is only an entry point, and one that is going relatively slowly. How does Novell sell a biometric single sign-on, or VRSN sell a biometric solution, without million of scanners in place?
The best answer is probably a major distribution of hardware by a credit card company or a bank consortium -- i.e., Mastercard or Identrus. They have so much to gain by use of biometrics by themselves that they can afford to distribute millions of POS readers and computer scanning keyboards. Mastercard saves hundreds of millions a year in less fraud; the banks gain a role as trusted third parties over the Internet, instead of an upstart like VRSN.
Where does that leave our schedule for takeoff? Unfortunately, I'd say a good year away. However, when it comes, it will come in a flood. You don't solve a chicken-and-egg problem without a dramatic change in the environment . . . and if we can wait it out (and not be overtaken by a competitor in the meantime), Brad will be a prophet. |
