Bergur Thormundsson
Research expert covering technology in the Nordics, AI and smart cities
Voice technology - statistics & facts
Voice technology is in fact not technology used by singers to make their concerts more impressive, but rather a growing market of advanced tech for all consumers and businesses. With machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) expanding throughout the globe and an increasing number of connected devices coming into the worldwide market, voice recognition has become a key part of various services and devices. Voice recognition technology can be divided into two main parts: the phonetic recognition of different words, and the interpretation of the actual language as spoken, a field also known as natural language processing (NLP). The global voice recognition tech market reached close to 12 billion U.S. dollars in 2022 and is projected to amount to almost 50 billion U.S. dollars in 2029.
The growing need for digital assistants
One of the main use cases of voice tech is digital assistants. Digital assistants are run on various devices, from smartphones to wearables. Yet, smart speakers are, however, the most widespread way to use digital assistants. Over 161 million smart speakers are expected to get shipped on the global market in 2022 and the volume of units is expected to increase considerably to over 270 million in 2028. In 2022, more than 25 percent of individuals from Western countries indicated using digital voice assistants several times a day. For instance, among the most frequently used voice assistants in the United States, there are Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant.Voice recognition looks ahead
While it is hard to guess at the future trajectory of all technologies, as time and events may influence them greatly, expectations of those who engage with technology can provide a glimpse of things to come. These consumer wishes often would guide the trajectory of advancement and interest in new technology as businesses that line up with these desires are more often likely to succeed. Language is of great interest to many and with the current population, it is unsurprising that both Cantonese and Brazilian Portuguese ride at the top of most desired languages globally for text to speech functions. Business, too, is likely to see an increased use of voice technology,particularly in the banking and financial services as well as in healthcare, as both expect to increase their use of voice technology considerably in the coming years.
