Biometric technology has been available for more than 15 years. However, until recently, the only users were a handful of government and military agencies. Wide-scale commercial applications were ignored because the James Bond-type technology was viewed as too obscure, too esoteric or too expensive.
Today, the price of biometric products and systems is falling as demand for the technology grows and more vendors enter the business. The Freedonia Group (Cleveland) predicts that the market will expand from $105 million in 2000 to $550 million by 2005. By the end of this decade, it will be a $1.5 billion market.