Nuance Communications today announced that it’s Nuance Voice Control (NVC) 2.0 can enable speech for any service on any mobile device from smartphones to feature phones. The new NVC combines on-device voice recognition with voice recognition in the network.
NVC functions include:
- Voice activated dialing: “Call Mom’s mobile”
- Free-form Web search: “Find tickets to Red Sox game.”
- Text or email message addressing and dictation: “Send text to Kate Smith; Hey Kate, Let’s meet at the lobby bar in 20 minutes and then go to the concert.”
- Music search: “Get Love Story by Taylor Swift”
- Navigation: “Find Directions to 159 Newbury Street , Boston , Massachusetts ”
- Games: “Go to BubbleSmile”
- Social media applications: “Go to Twitter”
- And any other feature or service operators and OEMs want to voice enable.
All commands can be launched from the idle screen.
From the release:
“There is a clear demand in the broader consumer market for fully speech-enabled mobile devices, and NVC 2.0 finally gives operators and OEMs the platform to deliver against that demand,” said Mike Thompson, senior vice president and general manager, Nuance Mobile. “NVC 2.0 was designed with the entire mobile ecosystem in mind, but specifically focused on mobile operators and the services they provide for search, messaging and additional over the air consumer-generated content. Elevating the accessibility of these features increases the opportunity for both operator and handset consumer loyalty and the opportunity for increased revenue per user.”
“For operators and OEMs to see a true ROI, they need to ensure these services are easily accessible to the mass market,” said John Jackson, vice president of research, CCS Insight. “As these speech solutions become more intelligent and pervasive across, within and among applications, they’ll be an important factor in helping the mobile market realize new revenues and increased customer loyalty.”
What we think?
Voice-enabling is another one of those mobile service that has been lurking on the edge for years, without ever really making it big. As a result, I had been about to breeze past this release, when I noticed a section at the very end – “Mobile Industry Commentary”, full of glowing recommendations and thumbs-ups from satisfied customers. This included Omar Khan, senior VP, Strategy, Product Management and Customer Service, Samsung and Rob Lilleness, president and chief operating officer, Medio Systems, Inc. With a line-up like that, I’m more inclined to treat the Nuance press release seriously, rather than as the usual PR padding.
Without a BB-like keyboard entering text on a mobile device is painful. Speech recognition will make texting and browsing a lot more pleasant.