The growth of conversational speech in healthcare, financial services, telecom and payments could spark growth to exceed $150 million in 2009.

(PRWEB) June 27, 2004 -- Research and Markets announces the addition of this new report entitled "Secure Speech Applications: Combining Speech Recognition and Speaker Verification" to its offerings.

In spite of the need for fast and convenient user verification and authorization over telephones, speaker verification software has generated less than $25 million in revenues. The growth of conversational speech in healthcare, financial services, telecom and payments could spark growth to exceed $150 million in 2009.

This report provides an analysis of the combination of speech recognition and speaker verification.

Key findings of the report include:

Secure Speech still seeks its niche.
- Speaker Verification (SV) has been an underutilized enhancement to speech-enabled applications. It has shown near-term potential to streamline sign-on and user authentication for a select group of applications, but has not fit the profile for ROI-driven ASR/TTS procurements.

- Theres high confidence in current alternatives.
Neither enterprise nor service provider customers have found the business case for speaker verification to be a compelling part of vendor selection criteria. Instead, there are high levels of comfort with current solutions.

- Not a stand-alone service.
Secure Speech" represents a packaging of SV with a larger suite of speech processing, call processing and application processing assets. SV is almost always deployed in conjunction with other user validation techniques, including a combination of PINs (personal identification numbers), ANI (automated number identification) and mnemonics of other personal information (such as date of birth, place of birth or mothers maiden name"). These are contextual and application-driven.

- Significant integration required.
Zelos Group estimates that roughly 10,000 ports (or less than 3 percent of the installed base of speech-enabled ports) support speaker verification and secure speech (at mid-year 2004). Forecasted revenues for speaker verification software licenses will approach $25 million with near growth rates of 20 percent average annual growth if all else remains equal, which could be as high as 45 percent if SV can be tightly coupled with conversational speech and call routing applications.

- Look to leaders to promote integrated solutions.
Led by Nuance, Scansoft and IBM, solutions providers are integrating speaker verification into packaged solutions targeting horizontal apps (like PIN reset), as well as specific industries -- financial services, healthcare and insurance.

For a complete index of this report click on http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/218956

About Research and Markets Ltd.
Research and Markets Ltd. are Europe's largest resource for market research. R&M distribute thousands of major research publications from the world's leading publishers, consultants and market analysts. R&M provide you with the latest forecasts on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest market trends.

For additional information on ResearchandMarkets.com, their range of reports or their value-added services, visit their web site at http://www.researchandmarkets.com or mailto:press@researchandmarkets.com