According to a report published by Transparency Market Research (TMR), the global optical character recognition (OCR) market is expected to increase at a CAGR of 14.8% during the forecast period from 2017-2025 to reach a revenue valuation of US$25.1 bn by the end of 2025. The growth of global OCR market is driven by the need to convert several forms of documentation such as digital camera images, PDF files, and scanned paper documents into searchable and editable data. Data entry companies use OCR technology to accurately convert various types of documents such as photographs or artwork, brochures, resumes, application forms, payroll forms and colored text or black text on white paper into electronic format. In fact, OCR technology has completely revolutionized the document management process in various sectors including legal, banking, education, healthcare, finance and government. This technology has helped to transform offices into paperless ones by digitizing documents and communications with speed and accuracy.
The report says, “The development of a more dependable OCR system has attained a strong support from the advancement of the technology to a multipurpose interactive system from a special-purpose reader. This has also helped in lowering the data capturing cost.” According to a lead TMR analyst, OCR technology could prove to be a beneficial tool for businesses that deal with enormous historical data or huge paper documentation that needs to be digitalized.
The rise of the digital world could drive the international OCR market and also restrict its growth in the future years. The elimination of paperwork encouraged in digitally revolutionized organizations and lack of knowledge to operate OCR technologies may mainly cause digitalization to moderately limit market growth. Another driving force behind the growth of this market is the domain-specific OCR system applications such as receipt, invoice, check and legal billing document OCR. They can be used for assisting blind and visually-impaired users, extracting critical information, the data entry of business documents, and automatic number plate recognition.
Global OCR Market Analysis
The global optical character recognition market is segmented based on type, end-use and region. The type segment includes software and service. The software segment consists of desktop-based OCR, mobile-based OCR, cloud-based OCR and others such as batch OCR, and server-based OCR etc. The service segment includes consulting, outsourcing, implementation and integration.
However, the software segment accounted for maximum share. In the coming years also, the software segment will maintain its dominant share. This will help the banking sector to progress and become more successful. Regarding the growth rate, the service segment is expected to witness a higher CAGR in the forecast period.
The end-user segment consists of retail, government, BFSI, transport & logistics, healthcare, media & entertainment, IT & telecom and manufacturing entities.
The market segmented by region comprises North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Middle-East & Africa and South America. Due to rapid infrastructure development and changing policies and regulations framed by the government, North America held the maximum share in the global market for OCR in 2016. In the upcoming years also, this region is likely to hold on to its leading position. Businesses in the region are also opting for cloud-based optical character recognition software as it is easy to use and cost effective.
In terms of growth rate, Asia-Pacific OCR market is likely to outpace all others by registering a CAGR of 15.6% from 2017 to 2025. The driving force behind this growth is small and medium enterprises (SME) proliferating in the region. In addition to that, the growing use of OCR software by the IT and telecom industry for document management will act as a stimulant for the Asia Pacific market. China and India are in a leading position of adopting OCR owing to increased investments in technology in these countries.
Key Players
Some of the key players operating in the global market for OCR are Anyline GmbH, ABBY Software Ltd., Adobe Systems Incorporated, ATAPY Software, CCi Intelligence Co. Ltd., Creaceed S.P.R.L., CVSION Technologies Inc., Exper-OCR Inc., Google Inc., LEAD Technologies Inc., I.R.I.S.S.A. (Canon), IBM Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, Nuance Communications Inc., NTT Data Corporation, Paradatec, Inc., Prime Recognition Corporation, Ripcord Inc., Transym Computer Services Ltd., Black Ice Software LLC, SEAL Systems, Ricoh Group and Accusoft Corporation.
