VoiceBox Technologies Hoisted into iPhone Application Market
Pdf
LAS VEGAS — Jan. 7, 2009 — VoiceBox® Technologies Inc., the award winning innovator of Conversational Voice Search applications, today announced the availability of its iPhone Voice Dialer.
As the industry leader in Conversational Voice Search application technology, VoiceBox has been busy enough managing its growth in its core markets with partners the likes of Pioneer and Toyota. “We initially resisted lots of requests from customers and friends to help out with their iPhones, which don’t have voice dialing,” said Victor Melfi, CSO and SVP Marketing. But some of our engineers just couldn’t help taking a crack at the problem. Customers expressed concerns with other products in the market: bad recognition, particularly with background noise; the inability to handle very large contact lists; having to stare at the screen all the time while mobile.
Apple introduced Voice Dialer to their iPhone app store the day after VoiceBox submitted it, much quicker than the anticipated month wait. “Luckily the servers were up that Saturday! It was a sneak attack, albeit a nice one!” said Melfi. One week later, downloads measured in the tens-of-thousands.
The hit product is based on VoiceBox’s ground-breaking, patented Conversational Voice Search, which allows people to use everyday language as an interface to any device. “The VoiceBox Conversational Search Platform makes applications and devices understand, not just listen,” cited the International Academy of Science.
VoiceBox originally decided to do the iPhone app to demonstrate its pioneering involvement in device integration – using your cell phone and then getting into your car with the app then available on an in-car display, for example.
Our technology is at its best in hybrid architectures – that is, embedded voice apps that can seamlessly access a server. :”The iPhone app is actually a simple ‘small app’ for us, aiming to improve the basic user experience versus showing off the full capabilities of our technology that you’d see in the demos on our website. But given the number of downloads, comments and requests we’ve been getting on the VoiceBox Voice Dialer, we’ve decided to develop an iPhone product line.”
“Voice-accessed text-messaging, directions, local search, news/sports/weather, even horoscopes. The sky’s the limit, so let us know what you’d like to have ‘at the tip of your tongue’, without tapping away at the touch screen,” said Gene Morel, who oversees the product line. Suggestions can be sent to .
Melfi, who co-authored the book Mobile Advertising, said that they’d like to test advertising in such apps. “It not only helps offering applications free, but we believe being offered a coupon when searching for a restaurant, for example, would be useful and of interest to people.”
About VoiceBox Technologies
VoiceBox develops Conversational Voice Search software that lets people search, navigate and discover content and services simply by using natural, free-form language. Commitment to speech innovation drives the VoiceBox vision: to make conversational voice search the de facto intuitive interface that will give people anywhere-anytime access to what they need. Incorporated in 2001, the privately held company's patent-pending voice search processes are applied across telematics and infotainment, music and entertainment, navigation, mobile and VoIP markets. VoiceBox Technologies was the recipient of the Gartner Cool Vendor award for March 2007 as well as runner-up in Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones Innovation Awards for software. For more information, please visit http://www.voicebox.com.
Editorial Contacts:
|
Victor Melfi |
