The focus of ng Connect is LTE, referring to the “Long Term Evolution” of 3G mobile, a term which, itself is trademarked by the 3GPP (3G Partnership Project). Both the 3GPP and ng Connect seek to develop applications and services that take advantage of the high throughput, low latency and plug-and-play nature of the underlying technologies. It is considered a stepping stone toward the 4G (and the as-yet unspecified 5G) environments which promise higher speeds and larger cell sizes. In joining ng Connect, Nuance is the lone provider of key speech processing technologies (Automated Speech Recognition and Text-To-Speech) as well as the predictive texting applications that can fulfill requirements for the new requirements for command, information input and dialog that users of mobile applications require.

Toyota, though its U.S. Sales Division, is the lone automobile manufacturer participating in ng Connect. Nuance has already had its speech processing technologies integrated into the Ford SYNC system (along with Microsoft and BSquare). Through its participation in ng Connect, Nuance hopes to benefit from sharing results of shared customer research, technology development and market conditioning and promotion. In the automotive domain, Loquendo is probably Nuance’s most direct competitor (with well-accepted solutions in “embedded” text-to-speech and speech recogntion, well-suited for both in-car systems and mobile phones).

Yet there is no better place than a moving car to showcase the value of high-speed, wireless links and low-latency access to shared resources built around maps, games, social networks and associated data stores. Accurate speech processing is important, but so is elegant orchestration of real-time transactions, asynchronous and synchronous conversations and a broad variety of interactions. In the car Microsoft, with Bing Search, Maps and active Windows development community of developers are already pitted against Google with its voice search, maps and Android developers. Joining the ng Connect community immediately expands Nuance’s hooks into a broader community of technology providers that stand ready to cooperate to bring more services to market.

The track record for these types of consortia is spotty. While participants profess to promote an “open” or shared approach to solution development, participating companies have shown a pre-disposition to protect their brands and their perceived competitive advantage. Still, we wish them luck.

Symbolically, the move signals that Nuance (especially with the Dragon brand) is emerging as the most-favored speech-processing technology across Apple’s broad spectrum of computing and communications platforms, including personal computers, notebooks, laptops, iPhones, iPods and (we would supposed) the upcoming iPad. As we’ve all learned from the “Google phenomenon”, the more utterances that a company is able to collect on behalf of a broad customer base, the better the odds of accurate rendering of spoken words. Stated differently, deeper integration into Apple’s application environment should translate into a better user experience as those users help computers “learn” to understand what they are saying.

Google’s “cloud-based” approach to speech recognition makes it “platform agnostic”, therefore we will continue to see speech-enabled Google applications on iPhones and other connected platforms. Google will continue to use the voluminous amounts of spoken phrases to expand a portfolio of offerings that already includes search, transcription and translation. Nuance’s is responding by forging relationships aimed to make its speech-enabled applications work well on Mac’s and other Apple branded products, while at the same time supporting multimodal communications on a wide variety of mobile handsets.

Now, all eyes (or ears) should be on Microsoft, the only other “superpower” with the ability to define and refine speech-enabled user experience across platforms and modalities. With its own speech recognition “engine”, a dedicated speech app server farm called Tellme and some excellent “voice search” apps operating under the Bing brand, it has the potential to compete. But, as Greg Sterling noted in this post about the introduction of its new mobile operating system, it has definitely bestowed second-class status to its voice enabled services.

This is something of a coup for Nuance in a hotly contested marketplace that spans the fully-automated service integrated into Google Voice to the various levels of human assisted services from DiTech Network’s PhoneTag and SpinVox, in addition to Nuance.

Back in September AT&T made an equity investment in Vlingo which might have given that speech-to-text specialist an inside track on transcription. However, Vlingo has applied its expertise toward spoken input for mobile applications – including search, text messaging and voice commands, and has not invested specifically in voicemail transcription and delivery.

I have been trialing Nuance’s Voicemail to Text for several months, and have it configured to deliver transcribed messages as email with the media file attached. I can attest to the fact that the quality of transcription is accurate enough to make it quite valuable for me. The service will now benefit from tighter integration with AT&T Mobility’s other enhanced messaging features and functions including delivery of the messages as SMS text.

Carriers have an important role to play in promoting speech-enabled services to mobile subscribers. Thus far they have been a promiscuous bunch, hedging their bets among providers of voice dialing, voice search, dictation and command. This multi-layered approach will prevail for the foreseeable future as mobile subscribers will ultimately vote with their pocketbooks to determine which services and pricing methodologies make the most sense (or cents) in the long run.

In Digium, Vestec has found a partner that is promoting its speech recognition engine to the thrifty folks among the Asterisk community. We’ll be watching to see how well speech recognition becomes ingrained in the Asterisk fabric. We do note that commoditization of speech is but the first step of the longer journey of creating a good user experience.

Leveraging the capabilities of a platform that includes Nortel’s installed base of enhanced directory assistance query processing and agent platforms (acquired in 2004), plus similar platforms developed by Varetis Solutions GMBH (acquired in 2006) and the listings aggregation capabilities of LSSIData (obtained in 2007), the company has the foundation for unassailable leadership in enhanced directory assistance, handling over 3.4 billion queries each year. But DA is, admittedly a slow growth or no-growth domain as Web-based search engines add location-based queries that include addresses, phone numbers and other relevant data.

Enhanced DA is just a teaser demo for the variety of services that the VoltDelta OnDemand can offer hosted services customers. It is a full-blown platform for virtual contact centers that includes speech-enabled interactive voice response (IVR), enhanced call routing and back end data processing that rivals anything else we’ve seen in the marketplace. Yet, thus far, the company has maintained a very low profile, relegating itself to the “highly reliable” or “telco quality” platform offering that puts it on a par with Microsoft’s Tellme or Nuance On Demand, with less of a commitment to standards than Voxeo.

VoltDelta builds differentiation on its ready-made incorporation of live agents into the call flow and workflow. As a leading provider of Directory Assistance, it has built significant credibility surrounding the handling of call volumes and enhanced IVR. Now its challenge is to expand its offer into selected verticals, including more telecommunications, financial services, healthcare and government offered services like the ubiquitous 511-based access to local information.

The announcement includes a glowing testimonial from the German wireless service provider T-Mobile, which has benefited from a solution that incorporates NuGram as a “plug-in” in Voxeo/VoiceObject’s Eclipse-based development environment. In the spirit of Recombinant Telephony, Voxeo and Nu Echo executives see a broad potential for this standards-based approach.

Being a speech technology company, Tellme polled its subjects to gauge their level of comfort with entering commands or search terms by talking aloud. While some indicated discomfort in certain settings (Geek.com cited “a restaurant), 71% of the overall sample indicated that they would be comfortable with voice command. The further breakdown indicated high levels of comfort while walking (93%), exercising (92%), and shopping or running errands (87%). Tellme issued this press release with these findings on July 29.

There’s no question that the mobile public is taking more interest in mobile speech applications. Later this month Opus Research will be issuing a new Research Report on mobile speech applications complete with a market assessment and forecast, trends analysis and portrait of the many companies that make up the service development and delivery ecosystem, including core speech processing technology providers, application developers, device makers, platform operators and wireless carriers. As I conduct interviews for this document, it is clear that interest is heating up.

Mozer noted that Pat Gelsinger, the sr. vice president at Intel who manages its largest operating group had noted this forecast in a recent speech: “By 2015 there will be over 15 Billion devices connected to the Internet”. Gelsinger was referring to networked toasters, ovens, refrigerators, clocks, home entertainment units, lamps and sensors that are capable of sending and retrieving information from servers anywhere on the Internet. Most importantly, from Mozers point of view, a significant number of these devices are destined to be speech-enabled.

As users of speech-enabled navigational devices well-know, the combination of voice-input and data connectivity is powerful. Moser provided us with a demonstration of the Moshi Alarm Clock, an unconnected precursor to a SCID. After using the magic words “Hello Moshi” to wake up the device, spoken commands can be used to set the clock, set the alarm, ask for a spoken readout of the time or the temperature.

Connecting the Moshi Clock to the internet through WiFi, Bluetooth or WiMax (in some areas) would make it possible for Moshi to transform itself into a World Clock or provide temperatures from around the world. But there are lots of other use cases for SCIDS and Sensory is playing an important role by providing relatively inexpensive chips to handle so-called natural-language input. One of the immediate opportunities is arises from the need for “truly hands-free” ways to enter commands or dictate content to mobile devices.

In a soon-to-be-released report, I’ll be updating our survey and trends analysis of speech-enabled mobile services. Software to support natural-feeling voice input, especially for music playback and search, is getting much more affordable. Text-to-speech rendering is getting very good and very affordable. Speech-to-text transcription remains a bit elusive, but the ability to interpret “natural language” commands – within understood contexts and use cases – is getting very good. You can follow our coverage of developments here and you may find Todd Mozer’s posts in the Sensory Inc. blog quite interesting as well.

In 2002, the i-Portal offered access to news, weather, sports and entertainment and had the capability to handle high volumes of activity. At about the same time, Promptu, then called AgileTV, was getting off the ground as a early-stage venture at SRI. Its core product was to be a voice-activated remote control for all the screen-based services offered by broadband carriers (primarily Cable TV system operators). The devices allowed cable subscribers to tune their sets to a selected program in response to instructions like “Find the Knicks game” or “Tune into some comedy”. Both Comcast and TimeWarner cable conducted market trials of the speech-activated remotes in 2005, and the company raised $22 million in venture funding.

By 2006, the company changed its name to Promptu and broadened its service offering to include voice-activated mobile search, including location-based services. VC’s chipped in another $11.6 million. In early 2007, another $5.6 million underwrote a further incursion into the mobile search world, with Italy becoming a major geographic focus. By this time, the entry of Vlingo, Yap and expanded offerings from Nuance under the Nuance Voice Control (NVC) brand and a number of other technology providers signaled the development of a speech-enabled mobile services ecosystem.

Promptu leveraged new attention to speech enabled mobile services to forge relationships with a number of content providers. With the Official Airline Guide (OAG) it rolled out voice-activated access to WAP-based flight information, which was branded Flights2Go.com and offered for $2.99/mo by Verizon Wireless. In September 2008 it formally announced a speech-to-text dictation service at the CTIA Wireless event in San Francisco. At Demo 2009, the company showed ShoutOUT a voice-to-SMS application for the iPhone. To the best of our knowledge, each product in the U.S. has hit considerable speed bumps on its way to mass adoption. The cable remote does not appear to have come out of trial. Promotion of the Flights2Go WAPlet does not mention that it is speech-enabled and ShoutOUT is nowhere to be found in the the iTunes App Store.

Now our eyes and ears are focusing on Italy as we look for carrier-based involvement in the text-to-SMS business. In North America, with new attention paid to the safety issues surrounding text messaging in cars, there is more incentive than ever for voice-activated texting (and Twittering) to take hold. The focus now must turn to providing the best user experience possible for an easy-to-use service that provides for hands-free, heads-up entry of commands and content. Promptu has clearly not cracked this nut, and it will not be alone it its efforts to create and popularize speech enabled mobile services.