Two developments will have an impact on the integration of speech applications with mobile phones and services around the world. The first took place last Friday when Nokia, the originators of the Symbian OS before it established the Symbian Foundation to promote a multivendor smartphone initiative, sold its 165-person Symbian Professional Services group to Accenture. In a separate, but related, development Nuance Communications announced its acceptance as a member of the Symbian Foundation.

Admission to the foundation will make it easier for its members to incorporate Nuance’s mobile solutions for voice and text input on Symbian-based devices. In spite of the attention given to the Apple’s iPhone, Palm’s Pre and the numerous Android phones, Nokia (and its Symbian-based smartphones) remains the global market share leader in the category, haveing shipped over 250 million mobile devices to date. Nuance expects the base Symbian “Series 60” phones from Nokia, Samsung, LG and others to continue to grow and thus extend the reach of its “predictive text” software – XT9, T9 NAV and TALKS&ZOOMS.

The transfer of Nokia’s Symbian professional services group to Accenture completes a chapter in Nokia’s history. It puts the parent company an unambiguous arm’s length from the smartphone OS that it developed. A little more than a year ago (June 2008) Nokia bought the shares of Symbian that it did not own for $410 million. Its objective was (and remains) to build a community of developers around an open source, royalty-free operating system. Sounds like Android, doesn’t it? It formed the Symbian Foundation at that time and enrolled a roster of device makers, content providers, semiconductor manufacturers and mobile network operators to encourage coordinated development of devices, services and networking capabilities.

By spinning off its dedicated professional services group, Nokia says it is showing greater commitment to the OS. Accenture is no stranger to Nuance. It has been a major developer and system integrator of speech-enabled IVRs into large enterprise settings. It sees the acquisition of a dedicated staff for Symbian development as an avenue into the high-growth field of expanding the reach of the mobile Web. The addition of Nuance to the roster of technology provider the foundation, in turn, reflects the parallel commitment to improving the user experience by enhancing predictive input.

Categories: Articles

Tags: Speech recognition, mobile services, Recombinant Telephony, Nuance