Consumer Voice Interaction Booming, Is Enterprise Next?Consumer Voice Interaction Booming, Is Enterprise Next?

As technology improves and productivity demands increase, widespread adoption in the enterprise is a not-too-distant promise.

Mary Meeker's recently published "Internet Trends 2016" report is considered one of the most eagerly anticipated collections of facts in Silicon Valley. Meeker is an Internet and new technologies icon, an American venture capitalist at KPCB and former Wall Street securities analyst whose influence places her at No. 86 on Forbes' 2016 list of Most Powerful Woman in the World.

While the report looks at Internet trends in general and goes well beyond the issue of voice interaction adoption, speech recognition technology and its rapid penetration into the consumer market certainly plays a central role overall (see report slides 115 to 131). In the report, Meeker clearly demonstrates how voice interaction and speech recognition is taking off in a big way.

Below, we have summarized the main points of the report that relate to voice interaction and demonstrate its rapid growth in recent years. Consider the following:

Source: KPCB's "Internet Trends 2016" report, slide 122

Source: KPBC's "Internet Trends 2016" report, slide 127

Voice Interaction at the Office
While voice interaction is growing fast in the consumer environment, widespread adoption in the enterprise market appears to be primed for growth in the not-too-distant future. As focus on improving productivity in the office grows, both breakthrough in recognition accuracy (99%) and the fast response of modern speech recognition systems (less than 10 seconds) mark the technology mature for application at the office.

In addition, the fact that humans can speak 150 words per minute vs. typing at 40 words per minute on average, as the report indicated, as well as the convenient, hands-free, instant usage, make the technology ideal for office use. With major industry players such as Microsoft (Cortana) and Nuance (Nina) investing significant efforts to increase the use of voice interaction within enterprises, it will be only a matter of time before the technology is applied at work.

Gidi Adlersberg, AudioCodes VocaNOM marketing manager, co-authored this post along with Barry Spielman, director of marketing operations (click above for full bio). Adlersberg focuses on enterprise-grade speech recognition applications. You can contact Gidi via email or on LinkedIn.