Global Voice Recognition Market Forecasted to Reach $113 Billion by 2017
The global voice recognition market is expected to reach $113.2 billion in 2017 after growing at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 16.2 percent, according to projections from U.K. analyst firm CompaniesandMarkets.com.
The analysis jibes with prior research from analyst firm TechNavio, which in early December forecasted the global automatic speech recognition market will grow at a CAGR of 16.28 percent through 2018.
According to TechNavio, one of the key factors contributing to this market growth will be the increasing demand for voice biometrics, especially for mobile devices. That's a belief that's also shared by CompaniesandMarkets.com, which estimated the the global market for biometric technologies to have reached $8.7 billion in 2013. In 2014, the forecasted revenue is projected to reach roughly $11.2 billion, and by 2019, it will reach $27.5 billion, translating into a CAGR of 19.8 percent.
"Mobile phone devices are driving the growth in voice recognition, with banks and other financial institutions implementing voice-based authentication for mobile phone based bank transactions, again increasing growth," says the author of the report, Mike King, director of CompaniesandMarkets.com, in an email. "At the moment, growth is due to financial organizations seeing the use of voice recognition as a major competitive advantage."
In general, though, King expects mergers and acquisitions to become much more common in the speech industry."Increasing consolidation of the market will continue over the forecast period from 2014-2018," he states.
The mobile applications global market totaled about $6.5 billion in 2012, according to the research. As of 2013, the market is estimated to be worth approximately $8.6 billion. At a five-year CAGR of 13.7 percent, the market is forecasted to climb to almost $16.3 billion by 2018.
King says the most surprising news from the research was that, “the global mobile biometrics market is expected to grow at 156.9 percent CAGR from 2013 to 2018.
King notes that this major market potential has spurred several big-name companies, such as Apple, to make key acquisitions to gain a foothold in the market. Apple purchased AuthenTec, a Harris Semiconductor spinoff that provides mobile security software licenses to companies like Samsung and fingerprint sensor technology to computer makers such as Hewlett-Packard and Dell, in late 2012 for $356 million. The technology gained during that acquisition allowed Apple to now feature a fingerprint identity sensor on the iPhone 5.
So far, banks have been the primary adopters, testing and rolling out new voice biometric technologies for mobile devices. Among them are USAA and U.S. Bank in North America, BBVA in Spain, and ANZ in the Pacific. Technology suppliers like Nuance Communications, VoiceVault, and ValidSoft, are also betting that voice biometrics will be the key ingredient to better mobile banking experiences.