Nuance unveils NVC 2.0 for mobile devices

BURLINGTON, USA: Nuance Communications Inc., a leading provider of speech solutions, announced the availability of Nuance Voice Control (NVC) 2.0, a customizable modular framework that allows operators and handset OEMs to speech enable any feature, application, or network service on any mobile device they bring to market, including feature phones.

The next generation of NVC integrates VSuite, the most widely distributed embedded command and control application currently available on more than 300 million phones worldwide, with Nuance’s innovative Open Voice Search (OVS), Mobile Messaging, and the ability to inform and launch any native or third-party mobile application.

NVC 2.0 is the industry’s first mobile solution that includes speech recognition on the device, seamlessly integrated to speech recognition in the network. Further, NVC 2.0 is platform, operating system, and search engine agnostic, allowing operators to reach mass market consumers on a variety of devices quickly.

This innovative suite of speech capabilities includes:

* Voice activated dialing: “Call Mom’s mobile.”

* Free-form Web search: “Find tickets to Red Sox game.”

* Text or email message addressing and dictation: “Send text to Kate Smith; Hey Kate, Let’s meet at the lobby bar in 20 minutes and then go to the concert.”

* Music search: “Get Love Story by Taylor Swift.”

* Navigation: “Find Directions to 159 Newbury Street, Boston, Massachusetts.”

* Games: “Go to BubbleSmile.”

* Social media applications: “Go to Twitter.”

* And any other feature or service operators and OEMs want to voice enable.

All commands can be launched from the idle screen to maximize the user experience, and the graphic presentation is fully integrated with the existing branded applications on the device.

“There is a clear demand in the broader consumer market for fully speech-enabled mobile devices, and NVC 2.0 finally gives operators and OEMs the platform to deliver against that demand,” said Mike Thompson, senior vice president and general manager, Nuance Mobile. “NVC 2.0 was designed with the entire mobile ecosystem in mind, but specifically focused on mobile operators and the services they provide for search, messaging and additional over the air consumer-generated content. Elevating the accessibility of these features increases the opportunity for both operator and handset consumer loyalty and the opportunity for increased revenue per user.”

“For operators and OEMs to see a true ROI, they need to ensure these services are easily accessible to the mass market,” said John Jackson, vice president of research, CCS Insight. “As these speech solutions become more intelligent and pervasive across, within and among applications, they’ll be an important factor in helping the mobile market realize new revenues and increased customer loyalty.”

As VSuite ships on millions of devices today, operators and OEMs are able to quickly take advantage of NVC 2.0 and help drive new operator and OEM search revenues through greater discovery, access, and usage of search applications. Additionally, users engage NVC 2.0 directly from the idle screen at the push of a button, making it very easy to jump directly to an operator’s purchase page in their online music store or to search results with targeted advertising, generating additional revenue opportunities.

Operators can also generate new revenues from bundled messaging packages, since NVC 2.0 allows users to dictate completely open-ended text or e-mail messages. This feature is based on Nuance’s state-of-the-art Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech recognition technology, used by millions of people worldwide.

“As a leader in handset innovation, Samsung invested early in the requirements definition, development and testing of NVC 2.0. We have worked with Nuance to integrate VSuite into many of our devices and found its use in navigation, Web search, and dictation both logical and intuitive,” said Omar Khan, senior vice president, Strategy, Product Management and Customer Service, Samsung.

“In working with Nuance to bring voice command and control to our feature phones, it’s clear that they’ve invested significant resources in making speech a pervasive yet reliable interface for the broader mobile market,” said S. Jay Yim, Ph.D., executive vice president, chief marketing officer, Pantech.

“The accuracy and performance of Nuance’s Open Voice Search feature is extraordinary. We tested it integrated to the Medio Web Search application for months and found it to be highly accurate and highly addictive,” said Rob Lilleness, president and chief operating officer, Medio Systems, Inc.

The NVC 2.0 framework is available to mobile operators and OEMs today in more than 20 languages.