Nuance’s voice technology is now helping to process over 2 billion voice commands each year on mobile phones, even without factoring in the increased usage of Apple’s Siri technology, the company has confirmed.
Peter Mahoney, Nuance’s Chief Marketing Officer, spoke with The Telegraph, detailing how the company’s voice and keyboard solutions are embedded on 6 billion devices worldwide, adding that Apple’s Siri feature was “driving a real, unprecedented renaissance in interest around voice”.
With voice-interaction still in its infancy, Nuance’s figures are pretty impressive. Many smartphone users are unaware of the voice capabilities of their handset, whereas some simply prefer to manually enter their commands and type their requests.
Nuance is on a charge as of late, the company recently secured a deal with Samsung to power voice commands on its Smart TVs and is also semi-connected to the company’s S-Voice service, which is its own Android Siri variant on the Galaxy S III, by way of its Vlingo acquisition.
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We know Siri as Apple’s voice-activated personal assistant, but underneath its friendly exterior lies a complex network of voice-centric algorithms, data-connected sources and other technologies that can capture and process your commands.
Although Apple (and Nuance itself) have never officially confirmed that Nuance technology powers the voice element of Siri, the removal of Nuance’s standalone app from the App Store when Siri launched was a pretty good indicator (although the company has a number of apps available for iPhone and iPad now).
The Telegraph article also states in a very matter-of-fact manner that Nuance is behind Siri’s voice recognition.
When the iPhone 4S launched, it quickly became a race to find out the hidden Easter Eggs in Siri (we still are now), no doubt spurring a huge number of Apple-specific processes for Nuance on its own. Nuance may not be able to disclose how many interactions it processes on the iPhone 4S due to Apple’s notorious levels of secrecy, especially when it comes to figures.
In the future, Nuance’s voice technology is set to become more personal, learning what you like and dislike, so it can provide more tailored recommendations and results.
Apple’s working on this already and Google is rumoured to be developing something similar. Nuance is the driving force behind the surge in voice-activated products, the company helping to make it all happen.
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