Global access to chatbot messaging apps to reach 9.5 billion by 2026

The total number of chatbot messaging apps accessed globally is expected to grow by 169 percent, from 3.5 billion this year to 9.5 billion by 2026.

A new report by Juniper Research reveals that the growth in the chatbot market is largely as a result of technological developments including predictive analytics, blockchain, cloud computing, machine learning and self-learning chatbots.

Chatbot messaging apps are expected to maintain the largest proportion of market value due to their success in driving efficiencies in conversational commerce, and driving convenience for end users.

According to the authors, “In order to migrate users to a conversational commerce experience, chatbots, and more specifically, the popularity of chatbots over messaging apps will be imperative.”

China is expected to surpass $21 billion in total spend in chatbot messaging apps by 2026, largely driven by apps such as WeChat. Vendors outside China will be looking to emulate this social media integration.

Omnichannel

Chatbots are expected to help facilitate the omnichannel experience through assisting in the process of payment acceptance. While this remains unique to certain chatbot vendors, those that have the capability use APIs of banks and payment systems such as PayPal, Stripe and EasyPay to process payments.

“Due to the increase in omnichannel retail, chatbot developers should form strategic partnerships with CPaaS (Communication Platform-as-a-Service) vendors to expand the reach of their services and offer a compatible solution for enterprises exploring new messaging channels, including messaging apps and RCS (Rich Communication Services).”

Omnichannel chatbots also help to drive conversations across multiple communication channels, where users can save their payment information, and charge users for items using tokenised credentials.

“In order for brands and enterprises to be able to maintain a continuous conversation across a range of channels, it is imperative that chatbot vendors allow their chatbots to be installed on these channels. This can be done through the use of APIs that are specific to each channel,” the authors said.

Juniper Research predicts that chatbots will begin to use multimodal AI, where multiple information streams converge, providing chatbots with greater accuracy across multiple mediums.