With a set of services, features and capabilities that closely resemble Vlingo, Nuance Communications has launched Dragon Personal Assistant. It’s available from Google Play as a free app “in beta form” for Android devices running Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 or Jelly Bean.

As the video below demonstrates, Dragon Personal Assistant wakes up to the trigger phrase “Hey Dragon.” Then it can carry on many of the functions that Siri is capable of on iPhones, plus a number of other functions that leverage Nuance’s experience with directed search integrated into Dragon Go!

For now, it is an English-only offering sold in the U.S. Nuance reportedly expects to add more languages and countries before the end of the year. Though you should notice that one of the features of the video demonstration is that Dragon seems to be able to accurately recognize what someone is saying even if his mouth is full or if he has decided that it’s a good time to gargle with mouthwash.

The advent of Dragon Mobile Assistant signals heightened competition in the PVA marketplace. Samsung Ventures has recently invested $2 million in Maluuba, a Canadian company whose PVA supports directed search in specific e-commerce catetories, much like the original (pre-Apple acquisition) Siri. Opus Research is closely tracking the steady stream of refinements, new entrants and possible business cases in the PVA space and will be issuing research report in the coming month.

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Tags: Nuance, mobile commerce, Android, personal virtual assistants