NLP Market Expected to Boom
The adoption of natural language processing is rapidly increasing due to the rising interest in human-to-machine communications and increasing demand for big data, powerful computing, and enhanced algorithms, according to new research from Valuates Reports.
Valuates expects the global market for natural language processing technologies to increase from its current level of $9.9 billion to $27.6 billion by 2026, growing at a compound annual rate of 18.6 percent.
Driving factors include increasing usage of smart devices, increasing adoption of cloud-based technologies, NLP-based applications to enhance customer support, and growing technical innovation in the healthcare and contact center sectors.
Natural language processing, Valuates says, parses text and audio data into components and understands the context of the conversation and the intention of the person. This enables NLP to improve customer service by allowing customers to speak in context rather than offering them predefined choices.
In the healthcare sector, NLP can help improve the accuracy and completeness of electronic health records by converting free text and voice into standardized data. This could also make documentation easier by allowing care providers to dictate notes as NLP converts them into documented data.
Natural language processing is most used for the extraction of information, machine translation, automatic summarization, and text and voice processing. IT and telecommunications, automotive, defense, and aerospace are some of the other industries that use NLP for various applications.
Leading market players identified in the report include 3M, Linguamatics, Amazon Web Services, Nuance Communications, SAS, IBM, Microsoft, Averbis, Health Fidelity, and Dolbey Systems. These vendors, the report notes, provide frameworks or technological tools to incorporate NLP into their solutions and open-source frameworks for designing custom NLP solutions. Some vendors also sell sophisticated development tools or API solutions with custom features.
NLP manufacturers are also increasingly focusing on e-commerce to improve customer experience with better merchandising and higher levels of customization.