Holiday Gift Guide »

Swype, touch screen rapid input made by the creator of T9, gets $5.6 million from Nokia and Samsung

Categories: Applications
By: , IntoMobile
Tuesday, December 15th, 2009 at 4:56 AM

Swype, which is a new way of inputting text based on drawing on a touch screen display that was created by the guy who invented T9, Cliff Kushler, just got $5.6 million in a second round of funding from Nokia Growth Partners, Samsung Ventures and Benaroya Capital. Swype has been in development for 7 years, and so far it has only shipped on one phone, but that doesn’t discourage Mike McSherry, Swype’s CEO, who says: “the level of confidence shown by investors in our series b, especially coming from two of the largest device manufacturers in the world and a returning investor, demonstrates the viability of our product and the known added value it can bring to mobile devices.”

There is a trend towards QWERTY devices, Nokia themselves showed a chart (below) that shows by the end of 2010 a relatively few amount of their smartphones will have a standard 10 digit keyboard. Thanks to the iPhone, and users wanting to consume more and more data on the go, large touch screen devices will soon be the preferred form factor.

Judging by the demo of Swype below it looks impressive enough, but I’m filing this under “must try before I buy”:

And here is a 15 month old video with Cliff Kushler demoing Swype himself:

[Via: mocoNews]

Update: Nokia has issued a press release, here is a quote from John Gardner, partner at Nokia Growth Partners:

“UI technology is a key part of our view of the growing mobile market. We are delighted to participate in this round of funding for Swype, enabling them to bring their cutting-edge technology to more mobile and touch-screen devices.”

SPONSORED MESSAGE
Get free domestic and international calls and texts to anyone with the Vonage Mobile app available as an iPhone calling app or Android calling app.

About The Author

Stefan Constantinescu

Stefan Constantinescu (@WhatTheBit on Twitter) has loved technology since as far back as he can remember. It started with computers, but in the past few years his passion has turned to mobile devices. As a mobile phone enthusiast who lives and breathes devices that connect to the internet, he knows he is not alone with this radical fascination of all things wireless. He is strongly opinionated and enjoys a good debate so leave comments in his posts and he’ll get back to you! Stefan began blogging as a hobby in the fall of 2006 and joined IntoMobile in the summer of 2007. Later he got a job at Nokia in March 2008, but as of June 2009 he has rejoined the IntoMobile team. He is currently based out of Helsinki, Finland.

  • dani2xll

    I think phone users are happy to be able to get back to qwerty whether it be by touch or physical keys. I for one dont intend to learn a new phone input technic when qwerty is acknowledge and learned all over the world with children introduced to computers from an early stage of their life. Nokia should look at the blackberry double-digit use keys and see why the touch and qwerty are doing so well.

  • ben

    That bloke in the video is the worlds slowest iPhone typist – did they hire those hands to make it purposely look bad?

    No gag, I can type twice as fast as that on the iPhone, with only a few errors.

    A fast blackberry typist (albeit on a physical keyboard) would also outpace the swype method.

  • Stefan Constantinescu

    Can’t say I feel any different, but then again I thought T9 was retarded until I got the hang of it.