Wave of the Future: Speech Recognition Technology

This article focuses on the innovative products that are bringing speech recognition technology to the masses, both in cellular devices and automobiles. In the future, we may not have to dial numbers or press buttons. Finding a location or a specific song may only be a voice-command away.

The Coming Wave of Gadgets That Listen and Obey
By: Michael Fitzgerald
New York Times
Jan. 27, 2008

INNOVATION usually needs time to steep. Time to turn the idea into something tangible, time to get it to market, time for people to decide they accept it. Speech recognition technology has steeped for a long time: Mike Phillips remembers that in the 1980s, when he was a Carnegie Mellon graduate student trying to develop rudimentary speech recognition systems, “it seemed almost impossible.”
Now, devices that incorporate speech recognition are starting to hit the mass market, thanks to entrepreneurs like Mr. Phillips. He is the chief technology officer and a co-founder of the Vlingo Corporation, an 18-month-old start-up in Cambridge, Mass., that is selling services to cellular carriers and other software companies that want to give their customers the ability to let their mouths do the walking — and the searching....
Now, Mr. Phillips is in a race for market share. Another start-up, Yap Inc., based in Charlotte, N.C., is running a beta test of its service, which is similar to Vlingo’s but already has text messaging. Igor and Victor Jablokov, Yap’s co-founders, decided to start the company because they saw their teenage sister text-messaging while in a car.
She wasn’t driving at the time, but Igor Jablokov says cellular companies tell him in meetings that two-thirds of their teenage customers have either sent or read a text message while behind the wheel....
Over all, speech recognition was a $1.6 billion market in 2007, according to Opus Research, which predicts an annual growth rate of 14.5 percent over the next three years. Dan Miller, an analyst at Opus, said that companies that have licensed speech recognition technology would probably see faster revenue growth, as more consumers used the technology. The cellphone market holds the most potential, given its billions of phones, but cellular providers are still working out the business model for such services.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/business/27proto.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin