As voice-enabled technology finds its way into vehicles, banks, the healthcare industry and other verticals, it seems reasonable to assume that such solutions will form a big part of IT investment. A new report that covers the Americas, EMEA and APAC regions indicates that nothing can stop the global automatic speech recognition market from growing.
In fact, Reportstack forecasts that the market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 16.28 percent over the period 2013-2018, and the key driver will be the accelerated demand for voice-biometrics. Voice recognition software technologies need hardware to transmit the signals, while automatic speech recognition and speech software work together to voice-enable many applications.
This means that the software and hardware technologies that are necessarily associated with it will also grow as will voice-enabled applications.
Voice Biometrics acts in the same way as a password does, the difference being that it uses natural voice patterns to authenticate customers instead of passwords. As it does enhance security, the chances are that this technology will be in great demand. Currently, speech recognition does appear to be in vogue in banks and financial institutions, and the success it has seen augurs well for its growth.
Contact centers continuously want to enhance the customer experience. Voice- enabled technology is already being used to automate calls and encourage customer conversation, delivering in the process a satisfying customer interaction.
The healthcare industry has been slow to adopt this technology, but with time, speech-recognition software should make a dent. The telematics industry is using voice recognition applications to help drivers, and “Siri”-like personal assistants are growing in number.
The net result is that the speech-recognition sector is bound to grow.
Of course, as with any nascent technology, there are bound to be hurdles, and accuracy could be a dampener to the growth of this market. However, it’s not impossible to iron out the creases. We see that voice recognition providers are hoping to strike partnership deals with manufacturers that are producing voice-activated products.
There are a few vendors that dominate this market and Nuance (News - Alert) has been seeing a lot of growth. It’s only a matter of time before other vendors enter the fray, ensuring that speech-recognition technology will soon see its heyday.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson