A recent Ingenio-sponsored survey by Harris Interactive explored a range of topics pertaining to mobile voice and data usage, as well as consumer acceptance of mobile advertising. The results show consumers are quickly expanding the use of mobile phones beyond voice-only capabilities, but monetizing those activities through mobile advertising remains an uphill battle.
Advisories
Nuance Buys Tegic: Takes on Texting
By acquiring Tegic Communications, the originator of predictive text entry, Nuance brings the multimodal user experience in house. The acquisition will accelerate the go-to-market strategy for two years of joint development efforts. Tegic’s global footprint includes partnerships with a diversity of wireless carriers, device makers and mobile content providers.
Private Equity Firms Acquire Avaya: Changes Afoot
In an offer valued at $8.2 billion, Silver Lake Partners, along with TPG Capital, acquired Avaya, Inc., bringing the networking stalwart into a fold of companies that includes MCI, Sabre Holdings, Instinet and Gartner. The new owners are in a better position to organize converged solutions that include call processing, speech processing and application workflows. In short, it furthers adoption of “communications-enabled business processes.â€
IBM Boosts Service-Oriented Architecture Adoption
Last week at Impact 2007 in Orlando, IBM assembled about 4,000 enterprise customers, prospects or practitioners of service oriented architecture-based software implementations. In comparison, just three years ago at IBM’s first SOA-oriented get-together in San Francisco, some 200+ attendees attended. The ranks have grown so dramatically because Big Blue’s framing of SOA is consistent with efforts to destroy computing silos, support unified communications and link IT development efforts more closely with overall business objectives.
Nuance with VoiceSignal: Hands-Free Leader in Speech-Enabled Mobile Search
The heated rivalry between two market leaders in embedded speech processing ended today when Nuance Communications acquired VoiceSignal for cash and stock valued at $293 million. Using its acquisition of Dictaphone as a model, Nuance seizes an opportunity to accelerate market share and technology leadership in a fast-growing market area, resulting in a $55+ million boost to its top-line revenue next fiscal year.
Voice Biometrics Conference Takes on Growth and Challenges
High-profile implementations, like VoicePay (in the U.K.) and Bell Canada’s Voice Identification Service, signal a new era for voice biometrics technologies. Success in the near term is pegged on high levels of convenience and security for customer-facing applications. Long-term success will be linked to establishing spoken passwords as a highly trusted way to leverage existing infrastructure for securing Web-, mobile- and phone-based commerce.
Soft Launch for Google’s Free DA: 1-800-GOOG411
The soft launch of 1-800-GOOG411 signals that Google, Inc. will vie with Microsoft (with Tellme), AT&T (with Nuance and others) and Jingle Networks in defining how directory assistance will morph from caller-paid, limited-function, query-and-response to an advertiser-supported, search/find/transact model. By 2010, advertiser support of free DA could capture roughly $3 billion of the $9 billion spent by advertisers and end-users for speech-enabled mobile search. Yahoo! is yet to be heard from.
Microsoft Buys Tellme Networks, Becomes SEMS Prototype
With its acquisition of Tellme Networks, Microsoft enters the realm of speech-enabled mobile search (SEMS) in a very big way. Heated competition among search leaders (Google and Yahoo!) and speech processing partnerships (Nuance and IBM) should accelerate now, with mobile subscribers benefiting from stepped up innovation. But uncertainty remains in the role of wireless carriers and the structure of targeted advertising sales.
A New Day for Enhanced DA: Nuance Preps to Take on Tellme
Nuance’s purchase of BeVocal signals that a race is on to build the optimal platform for automated handling of speech-enabled search, especially from mobile subscribers. The $8 billion+ market for automated directory assistance will be the first battleground. Today, Tellme is the market leader, but Nuance and partners are positioning themselves to gain market share while focusing on the longer term opportunities for speech-enabled mobile search (SEMS).
Assessing the Speech-Enabled, Mobile Landscape
Embedded speech made quite a splash at last week’s 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Nuance, IBM, VoiceSignal and Tellme Networks have rallied sufficient participation among wireless carriers, device makers and content providers to get a significant percentage of the general public using spoken commands to message, search and take command of their mobile resources.