Industry Dashboard: Datamonitor

Only nine global speech recognition deals were announced between August and October. (Network-based speech deals accounted for almost 80 percent of deals, while the remainder was PC-based.) So far, there have been 77 publicly announced customer wins in the speech recognition market in 2006. In 2005, there were 159 publicly announced wins. This means between now and the end of the year there has to be 82 announced wins for speech to equal that of 2005, which is highly unlikely.

In the September/October issue of Speech Technology Magazine, Datamonitor mentioned, "Over the next five months, Datamonitor expects stronger activity as customer wins begin ramping up in the third and fourth quarters of 2006." This scarcity of customer wins was surprising; however, it does not paint an accurate and complete picture of the market and we expect spending on speech solutions to continue to increase. Then what accounts for the decline in customer wins?

There are a number of factors. Most speech recognition customers opt not to publicize this information. In the last two months this has especially been the case, as we can name several deals that were not publicized. We've also found that many companies that have deployed speech are further expanding their investments in the technology this year. In fact, according to a Datamonitor survey of the 20 companies that deployed speech, 40 percent indicated that they would invest in more speech solutions in the next 12- to 24-month timeframe.

It is important to note that the information provided in the Industry Dashboard reflects only publicly announced customer wins. Datamonitor provides more detailed and comprehensive studies of the speech recognition market. For more information on Datamonitor's research please go to www.datamonitor.com or you can e-mail the author at dhong@datamonitor.com.