Technology 'Speaks' for Itself

Leading technology suppliers across the globe have been emphasizing on voice search as they believe it has a huge potential to amass market shares over time.

Consequently, this has become a hot topic within the industry as every hardware and software system release have a press coverage and incalculable op-eds and articles, signifying the voice search ‘explosion’.

Just another concept shown in cartoon films that looked like a distant reality, voice search has been garnering a lot of interest among researchers in the past few years. However, they also advocate the fact that the real stirring point in the search business has been since the launch of the first SERP back in 1996.

At present, Google seems to be the torchbearer within the western search market. Nevertheless, it has to continue improving. With 20% of the total searches in the hands of rest of the search providers, it provides an amazing opportunity to gain monopoly in this relatively new arena.

By gaining control of the voice search market, and providing integrated, seamless device solutions, firms like Amazon and Apple may persuade users to get more of their hardware. Moreover, Baidu’s speech recognition levels are the best among this global competition set, which may provide a platform for them to expand beyond their native China.

With an optimistic approach, this technology has a huge potential to revolutionize the way we source information, how we tend to communicate and what way we manage our lives.

Given the trail to the voice search becoming omnipresent, more significantly to the marketers, making it monetizable is not an easy job. With still a number of technical and practical challenges remaining, it has to be seen how the firms approach this business rather than making proclamations to be the best.

A recent study conducted by Forrester indicates that there is still a significant number of people who have never used the voice search. Speech recognition has to reach picture-perfect accuracy for the users to have a good experience to adapt them more widely. Monetizing what still is primarily a screen-free interaction remains a significant challenge for search engines.

Need of The Hour?

Some key factors that need to be considered while answering this question are:

There has been a rise in the voice based searches exponentially; 60.5 million people used Siri, Cortana or some other virtual assistant at least once a month in America alone.

A normal human can type 40 words a minute but can easily speak around 150 words a minute.

Leaving aside the Millenials and Gen X, the generations with more tech-maniacs, there has been a remarkable rise in the users among baby boomers from 8.6 million in 2016 to almost 10 million in 2018 for any kind of voice assistant.

What’s In The Market?

For a better insight into this technology, here are the key points of the most famous voice search providers:

Amazon - Alexa ($424 Billion)

Has been easily monetized

Holds 70% market share

1st mover advantage into the market

2. Google - Google Assistant ($581 Billion)

Focusing on Machine Learning first

Search market leader; has a market share of 79% in this segment

Monetization challenges still need a solution

3. Baidu - DuerOS ($661 Billion)

Funded by the Chinese Government

Has the best software (DeepSpeech 2)

Faces stiff national competition

4. Microsoft - Cortana ($417 Billion)

Has a huge base via Windows OS

Owns Skype Integration

Overall adoption of Bing! still remains low

5. Apple - Siri ($800 Billion)

Very desirable consumer end product

Has the most capital to invest

Lacks its own search engine

Adaptation Challenges

Integration - Customers need to be ensured by the providers that these voice assistants will easily integrate into 3rd-party hardware or create a product desirable enough to work under an ecosystem

Monetization - A strategy to monetize these solutions needs to be in focus without alienating the users.

Risk - With this technology still in its new days, firms will have to be very careful in order to avoid privacy scandals.

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