Two firms long known for innovative, high-visibility speech applications are joining forces to enable mobile subscribers to dictate and originate SMS text messages. Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM) distinguished itself early by operating one of the first and certainly the largest multi-application, speech-enabled mobile voice portal. At the dawn of the 21st century, using technology from sister company Loquendo, TIM’s i-Portal enabled all of its 36 million or so domestic subscribers to dial a number and talk their way through a broad spectrum of voice information services, akin to those offered by U.S.-based Tellme through the toll-free 800-555-TELL.

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.

Categories: Articles

Tags: Speech recognition, mobile search, speech-enabled mobile services