Intelligent Virtual Assistant Market Size, Share & Trends Analysis Report By Product (Chatbot, Smart Speakers), By Technology (Automatic Speech Recognition, Text to Speech), By Application, By Region, And Segment Forecasts, 2021 - 2028

Report Overview

The global intelligent virtual assistant market size was valued at USD 5.82 billion in 2020. It is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 28.5% from 2021 to 2028. The need for improved efficiency across service-based companies and the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered virtual assistants among various devices such as tablets, computers, and smartphones, among others, is anticipated to boost the market growth. An Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) is capable of fulfilling a wide range of customer service roles such as ease to navigate, offer product information, assist customers in paying bills, and carry out transfers or complete forms, and direct problem queries to human agents in customer service. Such factors are prompting banking and financial institution across the world to integrate virtual assistants, leading to industry growth.

IVAs are efficient and perform various functions for enterprises across retail, IT, banking, automotive, and others. Additionally, they deliver better conversational responses, which enables improving the customer experience. The IVA vendors are actively working on accommodating regional languages and provide customized virtual assistants so that customers from different geographies can easily communicate. Intelligent virtual assistants enhance smart home and security solutions. For instance, Amazon.com, Inc. completed the acquisition of Ring (U.S.), a company providing solutions to home security with a range of smart cameras and video doorbells. The acquisition will assist Amazon.com, Inc. in the integration of voice-based technologies into the home security products provided by Ring.

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trends and technological advancements have led to the advent of working distantly. The improvements over the years have resulted in the increased usage of cloud-based tools such as Skype and MS Office Online. With the usage of these cloud-based tools, it represents that an increasing number of people are working remotely and are highly dependent on virtual assistants to perform their tasks. Therefore, it offers enormous opportunities for market growth.

The IVA act as a crucial role in mitigating driver distraction as several infotainment commands can be executed through voice-enabled virtual assistants. Companies are implementing AI-based virtual assistants in vehicles that can perform tasks like suggesting the destinations based on the calendar and optimizing driver productivity by providing news, reading out emails, and messages, among others. For instance, In September 2019, Automakers: Skoda announced the integration of virtual assistants in its vehicles, which can be accessed through vocal commands and currently supports six languages.

Intelligent Virtual Assistant Market Trends

A virtual assistant lowers the operating cost by streamlining the business activities and saves the cost of advertising, interviewing and training new employees for the tasks. The assistant can help in managing company emails, managing business correspondence, scheduling and conforming appointments and assists in book keeping and invoicing. For instance, Amy by x.ai that performs most of the functions above. Several companies are using Nuance’s Nina, which is a virtual assistant that reduces call-center volume and drive efficiency when responding to customer requests. For instance, Kaspersky Labs, an end-point security company is using Nina powered a virtual assistant Lena to reduce call volumes and scale up its customer service in an affordable manner.

Furthermore, they can work as a virtual call center that can handle or follow up calls as needed. Marketing campaigns including email, blog and social media promotions can be handled by the virtual assistant. They can research content, monitor, plan and schedule the campaigns, which helps in building a network for the business, for instance, Social Media Virtual Assistant by TaskBullet. This increases the flexibility and work-life balance by affording the benefit of time. Thus, it has led to a rise in outsourcing activities by entrepreneurs. This trend is expected to drive the market over the forecast period.

According to the American Medical Association, the primary care physicians spend around 27% of their time addressing patient concerns directly, whereas, around 49% of their time analyzing the electronic health records and desk work. Thus, it has alarmed the need for integration of artificial intelligence in medical virtual assistants, to reduce the administrative burden due to excessive clinical documentation.

Currently, the emerging applications encompassing the use of AI-driven medical virtual assistants include medical record navigation, medical transcription, and medical information search. In September 2017, Nuance launched its AI-driven medical virtual assistant named “The Dragon Medical Virtual Assistant.” It aims at enhancing the patient-clinician interaction, improving the patient’s experience and simultaneously reduces the clinician’s administrative burden.

COVID-19 Impact Insights

The pandemic caused great disruption in various industries including the technology industry. COVID-19 is expected to have a significant impact on the service domain in the technology industry. Meanwhile, the advanced technology solutions are anticipated to substantially contribute while responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and address continuously evolving challenges. The existing situation owing to the outbreak of the epidemic will inspire pharmaceutical vendors and healthcare establishments to improve their R&D investments in AI, acting as a core technology for enabling various initiatives.

With the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, various marketing agencies, financial organizations, and grocery outlets have initialized the full fledge implementation of intelligent virtual assistants and conversational AI tools to enhance customer service in the crisis. Amid the pandemic, businesses face challenges in sustaining and are willing to try new technological avenues such as virtual assistants. Also, internet virtual assistants have assisted various industry verticals in these difficult times. Several medical insurance companies and public health institutions worldwide have deployed chatbots to assist users/patients in providing proper COVID-19 advice.

Product Insights

In terms of market size, the chatbot segment dominated the market with a revenue share of 68.9% in 2020. The smart speaker segment is expected to expand at the fastest CAGR of 29.0% over the forecast period. Residential consumers mainly use smart speakers for day-to-day tasks. In addition, there has been a notable demand for the adoption of smart speakers in smart offices and automotive applications. For instance, Alexa (Amazon) can be used for turning lights on/off, controlling smart appliances such as HVAC systems and music systems, streaming music, setting alarms and reminders. The increasing need for a convenient lifestyle has led to the wide adoption of smart speakers and is anticipated to drive growth in the coming years.

Chatbot has broad adoption in the banking and insurance sectors, retail industry, and educational portals. They help to access the required information and facilitate the end-users with ease of operation. Chatbot has gained market attraction and had the highest adoption in the healthcare industry. With the help of text/speech/audio, these bots help physicians, nurses, patients, and their families at various levels of life. The growing number of social media platforms and the need to understand customer behavior are the factors anticipated to drive the segment growth in the forthcoming years.

Technology Insights

The text to speech segment dominated the intelligent virtual assistant market with a revenue share of 59.7% in 2020. Automatic speech recognition technology is expected to expand at the fastest CAGR of 30.0% over the forecast period owing to the wide adoption of smart speakers in various sectors. Smart speakers recognize the speech and respond to the speech generated by the consumers in a predefined manner. The rising adoption of mobile computing technology across the world is expected to boost the demand for the automatic speech recognition segment. It makes it easier for customers to interact with smartphones and their applications. Major smart speaker manufacturers such as Amazon-Alexa, Google Home, and Bose are based out of the U.S., hence, most of the products are launched and shipped early in the region.

The text-to-speech recognition segment is expected to expand at a steady CAGR, owing to the versatile application of the technology that benefits businesses, consumers, educational institutes, and personal users. Furthermore, it allows content owners to respond to different needs and desires of users and the way they interact with the content. Meanwhile, internet virtual assistants are designed to provide marketing, support, order placing, sales, and to cater other customer services.

Application Insights

In terms of market size, the consumer electronics segment dominated the market with a revenue share of 18.5% in 2020. Automotive is emerging as one of the fastest-growing segments in the IVA market, which is expected to witness continuous growth over the future. Integration of virtual assistants with the infotainment system contributes towards delivering personalized content as well as improves comfort and convenience. Several companies such as Daimler, BMW, and Hyundai have integrated voice-enabled infotainment systems. In January 2020, Amazon launched Echo Auto, a voice assistant device that contributes toward enhancing the driving experience. Several companies are investing in developing the advanced virtual assistant for the automotive platform to tap into the full potential of the segment.

Virtual assistant in healthcare enables connectivity and interaction between the providers and the patients, resulting in the increasing demand across the segment. It provides continuous tracking of the patients’ condition through their smartphones and captures data through their voices. Moreover, it uses natural language processing to understand the need and conditions of the patient and reports with meaningful data. Furthermore, hospitals use IVR to perform tasks such as scheduling appointments and requesting lab results. This improves patient engagement, reduces healthcare inefficiencies. Moreover, they provide round-the-clock assistance which fuels the market demand.

Regional Insights

In terms of market size, North America dominated the market for intelligent virtual assistants with a revenue share of 43.94% in 2020. The changing BYOD trends have led to the emergence of working remotely. Working remotely provides flexibility to the employees and allows the usage of a virtual assistant to speed up the work allotted. This further drives the overall work efficiency and productivity. Similarly, the healthcare industry within the North America region has recognized the benefits of IVAs and is focused on improving the efficiency of healthcare systems. The American Medical Association of Medical Colleges has projected a shortfall of 40,000 primary care physicians, thus, the use of IVAs in the healthcare industry is expected to fulfill the shortage and deliver efficient and reliable solutions for health monitoring.

Asia Pacific is expected to expand at the fastest CAGR over the forecast period owing to the growing retail and consumer electronics sectors in China. The development of AI-powered IVAs for professional conversation has exhibited that they are highly effective in providing services and performing business functions such as appointment scheduling, consulting, across various industries. Companies are launching products that enable an app or device to act as an AI agent. For instance, in July 2018, SBI Card (India) announced the launch of 'ELA' (Electronic Live Assistant), a virtual assistant for customer support and services. It is driven by artificial intelligence and Machine Learning (ML) and is designed to improve the customer experience by providing appropriate and immediate replies to customer queries.

The European market is strongly driven by the automotive manufacturers in Germany, France, and Italy. Germany produced over 25% of Europe’s overall motor vehicle production. The country is home to some of the motor vehicle manufacturing leaders, such as Audi, BMW, Ford, Mercedes, Opel, Porsche, and Volkswagen, among others.  

Companies are implementing AI-based IVA in the cars and other vehicles. It is expected that the IVAs would be able to execute tasks like suggesting the destinations based on the calendar, offer remote car and smart home control using voice commands, and perform the smart speakers like stuff including providing news, weather, and other entertainment.

In the UK, the government is trying to encourage the adoption of IVAs in education and telecom sector. Also, the virtual Assistant industry is also evolving and improving, with a number of UK virtual assistant agencies beginning to expand to the U.S. market.

Key Companies & Market Share Insights

The key players operating in the market focus on new product launches and business expansions and innovation. IBM Corporation provides an intelligent virtual assistant named Watson Assistant and offers solutions to automotive, retail, healthcare, travel, and hospitality applications. Nuance Communications offers an IVA named Nina to automotive, healthcare, and other applications. The IVAs integrated with AI has created a massive storm and have exhibited various businesses and services across the globe. For instance, In August 2018, [24]7 Customer Inc. launched a Virtual Agent with Emotional Intelligence. Similarly, In November 2018, [24]7 Customer Inc. launched a virtual agent named [24]7 AIVA.

The companies have introduced virtual assistance in smartphones and desktops as well as tablets and other handheld devices. Some of the prominent companies such as Amazon Inc. and Baidu have introduced virtual assistants for their devices and provide customized solutions, which support multiple platforms. New product launches and partnerships are the major strategies adopted by the players operating in the market. For instance, in July 2018, Google Inc. is working with partners like Cisco and Genesys to build artificial intelligence technology, which will replace the work in call centers. The software is named Contact Center AI which will install virtual agents that will first pick up the phone when a customer connects to a call center. Some prominent players operating in the global intelligent virtual assistant market are:

• [24]7 Customer Inc.

• Amazon.com, Inc.

• Apple Inc.

• Baidu, Inc.

• Clara Labs

• CSS Corp.

• Creative Virtual

• CodeBaby Corporation

• eGain Corporation

• Google Inc.

• IBM Corporation

• Kognito

• Microsoft Corporation

• MedRespond

• Next IT Corp.

• Nuance Communications, Inc.

• Oracle Corporation

• True Image Interactive, Inc.

• Verint

• Welltok, Inc.

Intelligent Virtual Assistant Market Report Scope

Segments Covered in the Report

This report forecasts revenue growth at global, regional, and country levels and provides an analysis of the latest industry trends in each of the sub-segments from 2017 to 2028. For this study, Grand View Research has segmented the global intelligent virtual assistant market report based on product, technology, application, and region:

• Product Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

  • Chatbot

  • Smart Speakers

• Technology Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

  • Automatic Speech Recognition

  • Text to Speech

  • Text-based

• Application Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

  • BFSI

  • Consumer Electronics

  • Automotive

  • Healthcare

  • Education

  • Retail

  • IT & Telecom

  • Travel & Hospitality

  • Others

• Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Million, 2017 - 2028)

  • North America

    • U.S.

    • Canada

  • Europe

    • U.K.

    • Germany

  • Asia Pacific

    • China

    • India

    • Japan

  • Latin America

    • Brazil

    • Mexico

  • Middle East & Africa