Gesture recognition is the newest development in a laundry list of technologies aimed at improving how we interact with the gadgets in our lives.
It’s novel and arguably more natural than pressing buttons, which are both factors contributing to a CAGR of 75.87% in the gesture recognition market for smartphones.
Gesture Recognition: Pros
The key factors driving market growth are pretty straightforward—more smartphones and better technology are creating perfect conditions for gesture recognition technology to really take hold.
Smartphone Processor Manufacturers Incorporating Gesture Recognition
Manufacturers such as Qualcomm, MediaTek, Intel, Microchip, and Texas Instruments have all launched processors embedded with gesture recognition technology. As manufacturers invest in the technology, this is likely to result in gesture recognition becoming common among smartphones users during the forecast period.
Growing Smartphone Market
For a lot of people, losing a phone is like losing a limb. We rely on them more than any other technology. Even saturated markets like the US, Japan, Germany, and the UK are still seeing growth in their smartphone markets, and emerging economies in countries like India, China, Indonesia, and Brazil, have massive potential for smartphone sales.
At the moment, most smartphone processors are capable of running gesture recognition software. This provides immense opportunities for gesture recognition technology vendors, since it means the technology is already there, in place and in demand.
New Experience
Gesture recognition for smartphones is still in its early days, which generally means that it doesn’t have much functionality. But in the case novelty is definitely on the side of vendors, since most users are on the lookout for innovative new technologies.
Gesture Recognition: Cons
Gesture recognition in smartphones has a lot of room to grow, but it also has a few mountains to climb before it can really be considered an essential addition to smartphones, rather than just a fun new trick.
Low Value Addition
Samsung created a buzz surrounding gesture recognition when it first launched smartphones with Air Gestures. But what little hype they generated died relatively quickly when consumers realized there was actually very little value addition with the new technology. The lack of interest from consumers is exacerbated by the lack of applications that leverage gesture recognition. Challenges like this are affecting the market growth, which has resulted in some users losing interest in the technology.
External Light Conditions
In order for gesture recognition to work, lighting conditions have to be good. With too much or too little light, the sensors are unable to distinguish between foreground and background resulting in poor detection of hand movement. The position of lighting in the room also has an impact on the efficacy of the technology. Intense or overhead lighting can create large grey areas on the body, resulting in saturation and confusing the camera with a white background.
In order to overcome these challenges, additional hardware for gesture recognition is necessary. An IR spotlight along with 3D cameras can detect the exact position of the hand and measure the depth, which result in accurate recognition, thus increasing the efficiency of gesture recognition software. However, incorporating this additional hardware at low costs is likely to take few years, meaning we might need to be patient if we want access to really effective gesture recognition.
Limitations of Smartphones
Hardware limitations are also a major concern for vendors developing gesture recognition for smartphones. Gesture recognition technology consumes a lot of power to operate, and reduces the battery life of smartphones.
Another limitation is the position of the hand from the smartphone; gestures performed either too near to the camera or too far away from it cannot be detected. To add to this, not all smartphones with this technology perform without latency due to the low processing power of phones.
These challenges are a pain more than anything. They certainly aren’t insurmountable, and you just need to take a quick gander at the projected market growth rate to deduce that demand for the technology far outweighs any technical challenges. So while we might not have perfect gesture recognition technology at the moment, it’s certainly in the works and will be making its way into our phone sooner rather than later.
