RWS AR 23 Final Single pages - Flipbook - Page 10
Market Overview
RWS’s AI-enabled products and services
address a market estimated at £47bn.
Below is a breakdown of the large end
markets we serve, alongside the estimated
market size for each.
LANGUAGE SERVICES – CORE
LOCALISATION
Organisations seeking to engage and establish
communication channels with both internal and
external audiences, across diverse geographic regions
and languages, 昀椀nd themselves in need of the linguistic
and cultural expertise o昀昀ered by a language services
provider.
The core localisation services market (excluding
segments related to Life Sciences, Finance and Legal)
was estimated in 2021 at approximately £30 billion.
Growth in this market is driven by escalating volumes
of content and enterprises aiming to broaden their
international presence. Notably, this market exhibits
signi昀椀cant fragmentation. Nevertheless, RWS is one
of largest contributors in terms of revenue within this
landscape.
LANGUAGE SERVICES – DATA
ANNOTATION
Data annotation predominantly involves human experts
labelling data in diverse formats, encompassing videos,
images and textual content. This process empowers
machines and applications, driven by Arti昀椀cial
Intelligence ("AI"), to comprehend and e昀昀ectively process
the information. Enterprises embarking on the journey
of building AI applications need an extensive network of
individuals pro昀椀cient in various languages and spanning
multiple geographical regions. This network ensures that
data is accurately, precisely and consistently labelled.
The market scope for AI data training and annotation
services stood at approximately £2 billion in 2021, with
the sector poised for strong growth over the short to
medium-term. With the expanding comprehension of AI
capabilities, the demand for data training is anticipated
to surge across a broader spectrum of industries,
including but not limited to healthcare, 昀椀nance,
automotive and the public sector.
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RWS Holdings plc — Annual Report 2023
STRATEGIC REPORT
Market size and
sector breakdown
£30bn
Language Services –
core localisation
£47bn
MARKET SIZE
£2bn
Language Services –
data annotation
£3bn
Life Sciences –
localisation
£4bn
Finance & Legal –
localisation
£3bn
Linguistic AI
£0.3bn
Language
Technology
£2.8bn
Content
Technology
£2bn
IP Services
Source: 2021 analysis by OC&C, based on research from Slator, CSA, EPO and
Companies House.
