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IDC says that the biometrics technology market, which includes voice verification, reached USD118.8 million in 2000 and will continue to increase over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 50 percent. In a separate report the research company also says that the market for telephony speech processing software is expected to grow more than 50 percent a year to be worth over USD3.5 billion by 2005.
Capitalising on this trend are two companies on the island of Ireland, BlueChip Technologies in Belfast and VoiceVault in Dublin.
BlueChip is a three-year-old developer of voice recognition technologies and has just launched a product that is designed to automate phone systems within SMEs. According to Dr. Paul Donnelly, chief technology officer at BlueChip, "Ask" has been rolled-out in BlueChip's own phone system and has cut down on the number of calls administration staff now deal with on a daily basis from between 200 and 250 to no more than six. Moreover, Donnelly says that that the system can cut the cost of incoming calls for customers by a margin of ten to one.
The company, which has been undergoing a research and development phase over the last year, is in the process of signing new customers for Ask and also plans to release its second product, currently named "Clear," in the next few months.
"At the moment voice recognition technology works well in an office or someplace quiet," Donnelly said. "But the microphones that are used on mobile phones pick up lots of ambient noise, making it hard to use." He explained that Clear is designed to help filter out some of that background noise so mobile phones can be used on the street or in pubs for voice recognition.
The company is applying for a patent for the technology and hopes to make more announcements regarding its launch in 2002.
IDC's figures should give companies like BlueChip hope for the future. It claims automatic speech recognition (ASR), one of the three speech technologies, will account for 96.2 percent of the total 2005 revenue. The conversion of text into speech (TTS), another speech technology, will account for 3.1 percent of total revenue in 2005, while voice recognition (VR) will account for only 0.7 percent.
"The robustness of ASR technology has improved to the point where it matches touch-tone telephone key pad for interaction," said Steve McClure, vice president for IDC's Speech and Natural Language Software service.
Despite IDC's analysis of a small market for voice verification, Irish company VoiceVault (formerly known as BuyTel), which has an informal relationship with BlueChip, has already demonstrated tremendous growth in the year. In 2001 the firm acquired the core intellectual property of ITT, the company that VoiceVault was licensing its technology from. That deal, estimated to be worth around IEP5 million, came only weeks after the firm announced that it had raised EUR15 million in new funds. The company employs 70 worldwide including 55 in Dublin.
John Keaney, general manager of VoiceVault, sees the industry growing in three distinct directions: voice recognition, voice verification and voice identification, with each technology becoming progressively more complicated. Voice recognition, a technology that is already in use, deals with recognising voice commands such as in the products BlueChip offers. Voice verification is a tool that affirms a person is who they claim to be. Voice identification, the next generation of the technology, will determine who a person is based on their voice.
Keaney says that VoiceVault has rolled out a number of voice verification products already, including one for Progressive Insurance in the US that allows agents to retrieve PIN numbers through a system that confirms the user's identity through their voice. He pointed to another product that the company built in the US that verifies whether prisoners on work release or on house arrest are in the specified location when contacted over the phone.
As biometric applications become more widespread in the wake of 11 September, more companies are looking to firms like VoiceVault for additional security. Keaney says the company's technology has been independently tested and has 99 percent accuracy.
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