While the multi-touch technology is certainly the step forward in the mobile phones’ user interface development, it’s certainly not THE killer app. And while many of the industry’s analysts agree that voice will have the key role in the next stage of the mobile evolution, no company has done it right so far. Vlingo may change that, or at least their latest news release suggests so.
Apparently, Vlingo’s voice-powered interface is powered by “breakthrough speech recognition technology,” which should deliver what others have promised. Although we’ve heard this so many times before, I find Vlingo has a compelling offer for all members of the ecosystem — from end users to the carriers.
Vlingo is founded by the industry-pioneering speech scientist Mike Phillips and John Nguyen, and funded by Charles River Ventures and Sigma Partners. In addition, they’ve recruited mobile industry veteran and former general manager at Nokia Dave Grannan, as CEO.
Regarding technology, Vlingo offers:
- No limits on what users can say.
- The most accurate system on the market — by taking into account what each user has spoken in the particular text box within a particular application, Vlingo dynamically leverages this knowledge to continually improve accuracy for the user, and the entire community.
- The ability to freely mix typing and talking.
- Simple API which can run on the majority of 3G and multi-media enabled phones to allow integration into a wide range of applications.
Will speech recognition finally hit the mobile phones? Personally, I think we’ll see the first such devices hitting the market somewhere next year. In the meantime, you may want to see this technology in action. Simply go to Vlingo’s website and click on the download tab. And drop us a comment, if you have one. 🙂