Standardization, Open Platforms to Boost Enterprise Deployments of Speech
Speech capabilities are evolving from isolated, small-scale applications within business infrastructures to enterprise-wide deployments due to enhanced focus on standardization and open platforms. At the same time, a variety of delivery models are being used to provide speech solutions. As a result, the telephony-based speech technology and solutions markets are exhibiting tremendous growth in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).
"Overall market growth will be supported by the growing improvements of core speech technologies, the adoption of these technologies by leading telephony vendors, as well as the availability of partially packaged solutions that allow customization", notes Shomik Banerjee, Industry Analyst at Frost & Sullivan. "Speech technologies are also being deployed in embedded solutions such as speech-enabled mobile phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) as well as handheld devices and are also likely to be used in different multimodal solutions."
In keeping with this trend, core technology vendors are expected to witness a surge in revenues from automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS) and speaker verification (SV) licenses. Currently, speech-enabled self-service solutions (such as interactive voice responses (IVRs) and enterprise voice portals), auto attendants, unified messaging, directory assistance and voice portals generate over 70.0 per cent of telephony-based speech technologies revenues.
Despite this, speech applications continue to have limited penetration among enhanced services due to factors such as high cost and lack of value-added speech-enabled consumer services.
"Hence, vendors will gain by providing speech resources across self-service and enhanced service applications as this will help reduce the price premium of speech applications", says Banerjee. "The increasing adoption of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) and Internet protocol (IP) telephony is likely to enable cost-efficient sharing of speech resources across multiple applications and will have a favorable impact on the deployment of speech technologies."
Due to the commoditization of core technology products, vendors will need to diversify their product lines to tap into higher levels of the value chain, particularly the applications level. In view of the tiered competitive market structure, the increasing focus on specialization and emphasis on specific product areas is likely to result in innovation, competitive pricing and greater support for open standards.
The consolidation of existing participants as well as the entry of new vendors and service providers is resulting in intensifying competition and the market is likely to witness increased investment in sales and marketing that will boost customer awareness. It will become imperative to seamlessly integrate and interface speech applications with existing systems and next-generation network (NGN) infrastructure to enable customers to maximize the value of their investments.
EMEA telephony-based speech technologies and solutions market is part of the Telecom Subscription, which provides an overview of speech technologies as well as the potential of speech-enabled solutions in the market. It analyses the key factors driving the growth of core technologies such as automatic speech recognition, text-to-speech and speaker verification. This research service also includes a detailed description of the different speech applications and the key factors driving their growth. All research included in subscriptions provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends. All research is evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants. Interviews are available to the press.