Portable media players to add voice capability

NEW DELHI, INDIA: Some of the companies in the field of storage device are expected to add voice capability in their portable media devices within next 18 months.

In the last couple of years, the market has seen players in the storage segment developing portable media players to enhance value of their storage devices.

In the coming days, Aricent, a global technology and service company with a focus on communication, expects that more integrated services would be added to these storage devices. Voice capability will be one of them.

Sajal Gupta, vice president of business development for wireless solutions at Aricent indicated this in an exclusive interaction with CIOL.

"Companies are working on integrated solution. Voice is one value addition that they can do in their devices. In the next 18 months we may see some companies to provide voice capability in their portable media players. They may not directly compete with GSM or wi-max but they may provide voice capability using wi-fi," said Gupta.

Aricent works with hardware manufacturers and provides them solution to customize their products as per the need of the market. Companies see that adding voice capability in devices will be upcoming trend in many products.

"We provide our software solution Media Exp that supports development of various capability in a device. We are in discussion with some of the companies to support them in developing this kind of capability," added Gupta.

According to Gupta, in coming days the segment may see prevalent products like set-top-box to act like a hub and even provide voice service. "This would provide additional opportunity to telecom companies to add revenue," he said.

From the ongoing trend in market it can be observed that most of the DTH companies are mostly linked to telecommunication service providers. Adding voice capability in STB will surely make business sense for telecom companies and DTH companies in coming days. That too when many other devices like PMP are expected to provide voice service using wi-fi.