Nuance Communications, well known for automatic speech recognition and speech synthesis software have acquired a whole series of companies this year to allow diversification in mobile and vertical markets like healthcare. Nuance are probably most famous for their domination in human speech technologies, both desktop speech dictation systems and enhanced IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems. When last I looked at the stats, they had hoovered up about 70% of this marketplace by virtue of combining the “big two” Nuance and Scansoft into one company.
On the mobile front, Nuance bought two interesting companies back in August, namely Tegic and VoiceSignal. At the Symbian Smartphone Show last week, they were displaying the logos from both of these companies, and showing some of the technology. Tegic are the company responsible for T9, the predictive text system used on many mobile phones. One year ago Nuance held a competition where Ben Cook, the World’s fastest texter, took on a speech recognition system to see who could send text faster from a mobile. The Nuance speech recognizer won the competition, but evidently Nuance were sufficiently impressed with T9 that they decided to buy-in the technology.
VoiceSignal have embedded speech technology that can be found inside handsets from Blackberry and Palm today, which contrasts with the centralized, server-based recognition systems Nuance are famous for. VoiceSignal also power mobile phone technology for the visually impaired, such as the ability to speak the text from a mobile screen so that you know where you are in the menus.
It’s clear that Nuance are interested in developing their portfolio of wireless solutions, and in particular solving the problem of how mobile users send text messages, given that the majority of mobile phones don’t have a QWERTY keyboard. Actually even those that do have full keyboards today are often too small to enter text at any speed (e.g. the Palm Treo or Nokia E61), or just plain slow, for example the iPhone. Certainly “alternative input” technologies are likely to be a growing area as we expect more and more from our cellphone experience.
October 25th, 2007 at 3:11 am
Hi,
One Voice has a dial Tone system which allow user to make phone call by voice. I don’t think any company has this tech yet.
http://www.onevoicetech.com/
Now everyone can make calls, send & receive E-mail, SMS, Paging and Instant Messages from any phone or control device - using only their voice. One Voice’s 4th Generation Voice technology works with mobile phones, PC’s, and other devices and lets people get more done - faster and more easily than ever before.
One Voice Technologies is leading the Voice Evolution with cutting edge solutions that will change the way people use phones and other devices - FOREVER.
thank
October 25th, 2007 at 4:03 pm
I wouldn’t discount keyboard on phones just yet - our touchscreen Viewty phone has a pretty decent on-screen QWERTY keyboard (as well as a numeric pad). QWERTY is not the only way of inputting by touch, and as touchscreens become more widespread on phones we could well see novel and new ways of input on screen. Voice has its uses but you still have problems like background noise and training the phone to recognise its user’s accent and tone.
October 28th, 2007 at 9:29 pm
[…] An equally strong player is Nuance Communications. Nuance , well known for automatic speech recognition and speech synthesis software, have acquired a whole series of companies this year to allow diversification in mobile and vertical markets like healthcare. On the mobile front, Nuance bought two interesting companies back in August, namely Tegic and VoiceSignal. Tegic are the company responsible for T9, the predictive text system used on many mobile phones. VoiceSignal have embedded speech technology that can be found inside handsets from Blackberry and Palm today. They also power mobile phone technology for the visually impaired, with the ability to speak the text from a mobile screen so that you know where you are in the menus. (Hat tip to Martyn Davies) […]
February 17th, 2008 at 10:45 am
[…] Nuance qui déploie ses solutions sur 2 milliards de téléphones? Les récentes acquisitions de Tegic et Voice Signal dynamisent leur développement. Vous utilisez peut-être la touche T9 pour […]