Voice recognition predicted to be $16bn market by 2021

Voice-based virtual assistants to enjoy 'widespread adoption' by 2021, says TrendForce

The global voice recognition market is set to swell by over six-fold over the next five years as competition in the sector between Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Google accelerates.

That's according to market research firm TrendForce, which predicts the global market value of voice recognition solutions will bulge from $2.61bn in 2016 to $15.98bn in 2021, an annual growth rate of 44 per cent.

TrendForce said the main source of that growth will stem from the "widespread adoption" of voice-based virtual assistants such as Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri and Microsoft's Cortana.

TrendForce analyst Christy Lin said Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant hogged the headlines at this year's CES show because it was featured in many of the smart products on show, adding that Amazon is currently the market frontrunner.

"Apple's Siri is the earliest market entrant, but the IoT solutions that it provides mainly centre on Apple products such as the iPhone," she said.

"Google on the other hand has opened up its voice control platform to third-party developers and released Google Home and Google Assistant to compete against Amazon's services. However, Google's virtual assistants still lag behind Alexa in terms of hardware-software integration."

Microsoft is playing catch-up in the virtual assistant market because of its late entry with Cortana, Lin added.

"Microsoft also made a significant decision to allow third-party developers to re-use the codes they have compiled for creating Alexa's skills for building Cortana's skills," she said. "This move could affect the competitive landscape in the future."

Jack Narcotta, a senior analyst at research house TBR, agreed that Alexa is setting the standard for the voice-controlled computing market.

"Voice technology fulfils the promise and potential of the convergence of PCs, mobile devices and other connected devices more than any PC- or mobile device-centric solution to date. Alexa could be on par with Windows, Android and iOS, equally as disruptive to the devices market as when those operating systems were introduced," he said.