Next week, Opus Research expects voice-activated services to assume a more prominent role at the GSMA Mobile World Congress. Then again, I feel like we say this every year. Then, when it’s all over, I write the obligatory survey of the exhibitors, presentations, products and services that make use of speech processing technologies for service delivery.

This year will be the same in many ways. Voice services, in general, will take a back seat to some of the more high-profile, glamorous and lucrative services. These include SMS-texting, downloading ringtones, gaming, navigation and ultimately watching (or sharing) video entertainment. But that “backseat” analogy is quite inaccurate. Voice as an input modality is taking on an increasingly important role in front of the most popular services. In short, if it works on a wireless phone, it is easier to access by speaking. Let’s not forget that, although they increasingly act like computers, personal navigation systems, MP3 Players, game consoles, and wireless handsets are, at base, phones.

Blame it on iPhone and Blackberry
The multiplicity of applications and services made available through iPhones, G1’s and other touch-screen smartphones are made possible by simplifying the process of product ordering and service initiation. The addictive nature of the “Crackberry” is due in some part to the simplicity of retrieving and originating both business and personal email. Frequent users are likely to do more with their phones. They will add new services, download more content or media and, most importantly, stay loyal to their carrier.

Voice-activation, by simplifying order entry and service initiation on the majority of wireless devices, should be in the driver’s seat, not the backseat of any mobile conference. Below, using Nuance Voice Control 2.0 as an example, I further dramatize my point.

Say a Command: The Conversational Dialtone
Conversational access to mobile content and services is a winning proposition for wireless operators, device makers and content providers. Nuance Voice Command 2.0 (NVC 2.0) expands the roster of services that can be initiated by responding to the simple prompt: “Say a command.” It integrates the broadly circulated V-Suite, which has been managed and refined by Nuance since the acquisition of VoiceSignal in May 2007, with Open Voice Search, largely based on technology, resources and business relationship acquired in late 2006 with MobileVoiceControl.

Today, a small set of high-end phones — exemplified by the Apple iPhone, RIM Blackberry, T-Moble’s G1 and other touchscreen-enabled models — serve as showcases for a large and growing inventory of “apps” made available through carrier-run storefronts. Given that 80% of mobile subscribers are without smartphones, the coverage of popular capabilities in the press amplifies the mystique surrounding mobile search, dictation and a growing list of speech-initiated services.

Looking back nearly a decade, VoiceSignal’s business development group aggressively pursued relationships with wireless device makers. As a result, by Nuance’s estimation, V-Suite is available to 300 million mobile subscribers around the world. Early instantiations of V-Suite powered voice dialing on hundreds of millions of handsets. NVC 2.0 makes the services that are most popular among owners of smartphones available to the “rest of” wireless subscribers.

Sweets from the Suite
NVC 2.0 provides access to a suite of services and capabilities directly from the “idle screen” of virtually any feature phone. In response to the prompt “Say a command,” mobile subscribers can initiate:

• Voice activated dialing – Classic “Call Mom!”
• Free-form Web search – To populate the search box in popular search engines
• SMS, text messaging – Including a toggle between address information and content. Initiator can say, “Send text to Derek Top (pause); Hey Derek, I’ve just emailed my advisory on Nuance Voice Control.”
• Navigation and driving directions – Location-aware phones can respond to the simple command like “Get directions to 400 California Street, San Francisco, CA”
• Conversational e-commerce – Search or shop for music and other content: “Find ‘Whatever You Like’ by T.I.”
• Mobile game playing – At least for speech-initiation of games, such as “Go to Zuma”
• Participating in social media activities, through an incantation such as, “Go to Twitter”

These capabilities are built into the product suite today, in terms of command and control. Integration with dictation and “free-form Web search” will be promoted more aggressively in the market in the next 3-6 months.

The Importance of Being Device Agnostic
Service delivery customarily requires close coordination and cooperation among mobile phone makers (both OEMs and ODMs), mobile operators and content providers. By contrast, NVC 2.0 is called “device agnostic” by Nuance management. In terms of competition, Vlingo has many of the speech-initiated capabilities but, to date, works only on the Apple iPhone and selected RIM Blackberries.

Speech-to-text transcription specialists like SpinVox, Jott, PhoneTag (formerly Simulscribe), Vlingo and Yap are positioned as voice front-ends to popular mobile services. Search king Google has also put the seal of approval on voice input, initially for iPhone users but fanning out to other smartphones. To date, with the exception of the peripatetic SpinVox spin machine, none of them has done much to raise their profiles among the population of mobile subscribers at large.

With more than 8,000 delegates and a broad waterfront of topics to cover, the GSMA Mobile World Congress may not be the best venue to raise speech’s profile. But, thanks to efforts by Nuance, its partners and its competitors, we expect speech-initiated services to take on a higher profile in the coming months. Soon, the clock will start on major marketing and service delivery efforts by Nuance and carriers around the world. The message being that the general mobile public (not just smartphone owners) wants ready access to popular services. And for the vast majority of phones (i.e. those lacking touchscreens and operating systems) voice-activation is the most convenient access method.

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