Financial services companies are continuing to drive speech recognition technologies, with the voice business market expected to grow to $4.33 billion by 2007, according to a new report from Datamonitor.
The report, "Voice Portals and Applications", shows the supply-side market for voice business technologies and services was worth $629 million at year-end 2001, a decline of 3% from 2000. However, Datamonitor expects the market to return to positive growth during the second half of 2002 and grow quickly through 2007.
Benjamin Farmer, Datamonitor voice business analyst, says: "Vendors have been forced to apply their technologies towards solving actual business needs. As a result, many vendors have been able to demonstrate return on investment (ROI) to enterprises and service providers through voice solutions."
According to the report, within financial services there are several unique opportunites for emerging advanced speech applications. The retail banking and investments/securities verticals are introducing speech technology to the masses and will remain the largest markets for voice services. Insurance companies, while commonly slower to integrate new technologies, will grow in importance, initially implementing account management automation and later introducing productivity applications including sale force automation, says Datamonitor.
Farmer adds: "Notably, a number of large technology vendors, including Oracle, Sun and Microsoft, have increased their presence in this space. While this has caused some concern among voice vendors, it nevertheless represents significant opportunities for the market."