Dial, dictate and mobile voice search: Nuance speech solution pre-loaded on Palm Treo 755p

by: admin Monday, September 10th, 2007

Rating: red lorry, yellow lorry – trying voice searching that!

Anyone that reads our analysis knows that we continue to have doubts about the quality of voice search. But we agree that voice is a killer application and will be vital value added application moving forward… especially in developing countries.

Nuance is a leader in voice and has bought up the lions share of the voice market. So before we move forward on the latest announcement – I want to share a “rumour” that was sent to me by anonymous. It said that Nuance was considering purchasing Spinvox (voice to text). I received this a few weeks ago – but didn’t act on it as I get that many rumours sent to me and to be honest Nuance has spent that much money buying Tegic, VoiceSignal etc. that I doubt the company had the money to make yet another acquisition.

But back to the press release:

● Adoption rate of more than 15 percent (of units sold). Based on Nuance estimates, 17 percent of users who purchased a Treo 755p device in the first weeks following its release used Nuance Voice Control, an adoption rate well above industry average for pre-loaded mobile applications.

● Average usage rate of 48 voice-enabled transactions per user (per month). Nuance Voice Control subscribers on this device make an average of 10 to 14 voice requests per week (an average of 48 requests per month). The application’s ease-of-use – combined with the user’s desire to complete various tasks with less effort, time and keyboard clicks – generates unmatched usage frequency.

● Voice Dialing, Web Search, and SMS are the most popular voice-activated transactions among Treo 755p users. Voice dialing accounts for 44 percent of usage, SMS and email dictation represent nearly 25 percent of usage, and Web Search (including finding a business, stock quotes, weather, Web navigation and search) represents 22 percent of usage. Web Search transactions carry a particularly strong value proposition to mobile operators through emerging ad-supported business models.

What we think
The stats provided by Nuance above are interesting. 17% of users that purchased a device used Nuance. I am stunned at the 22% of usage comes from web search with voice – but in the US market, where people spend a lot of time in the car, its believable.
But adding voice is just the tip of the iceberg. Growing voice with keyword voice search or ad-funded keywords is the future. But first of all voice search has to work in all situations and not just quiet ones.