The newest player on the crowded mobile search playground is one of the most vocal.
Promptu—known until this week as Agile TV—officially joined the world of wireless, delivering a voice-recognition offering designed to allow users to discover, purchase and download content over mobile phones. Like a handful of other players in the space, Promptu hopes wireless subscribers will use voice to find ringtones, games and other applications instead of clicking through dozens of menus on carrier decks.
The new offering requires users to hold down a key on the phone, much like using push-to-talk technology, and give voice commands such as “Find U2” or “Find CNN.” The query is delivered to servers that find matching meta-data such as a title of a song, artist’s name or type of content; results are scored based on relevance and delivered to the user’s handset.
“If those very large (carriers) are going to grow, they’re going to have to either steal the other guys’ customers-which is a zero sum game-or they’re going to have to sell data plans; stuff with a meter attached to it,” said Brady Bruce, who this week is expected to officially join Promptu as the vice president of mobile business development. Voice recognition technology allows searches to occur “above the deck so that everything is one click, one word away.”
While the news marks the company’s entry into wireless, Agile TV is a six-year veteran of voice recognition technology. The company is working with cable operators and on-demand TV service providers to deploy remote controls that can change channels, search for programming and record shows with voice commands.
The 65-employee company closed a $22 million round of funding last May and has raised more than $45 million since its launch. The company plans to demonstrate its new offering over a Tier 1 carrier’s network at CTIA Wireless 2006 in Las Vegas next month.
“We saw (in 2000) that discovery and navigation was going to be a major problem” for TV viewers, said David Hanson, a former cable executive. “(The wireless industry today) is just like cable TV in the early days.”
Software developers specializing in voice recognition are betting on wireless content. After a series of fits and starts due to balky technology and economic uncertainty, developers are hoping to entice users to bypass cumbersome decks by speaking to-instead of through-their phones.
V-Enable powers mobile search applications for Verizon Wireless and a handful of smaller U.S. carriers. Like Promptu, V-Enable offers a client-server solution supported by BREW, Java and most other common wireless platforms. Both firms hope to capitalize by offering a way for users to dig through ever-enlarging content portfolios both on and off carrier decks.
V-Enable recently closed a $6 million round of funding and plans to use the cash to expand its sales and marketing efforts and accelerate development of its patent-pending technology.
“As the amount of mobile content such as ringtones, music, video and other media continues to grow, V-Enable is uniquely positioned to help mobile subscribers search, preview and ultimately purchase content better, easier and faster than ever before,” said Craig Cooper of SoftBank Capital, a backer of the San Diego-based developer.
Others on the playing field include VoiceSignal Technologies Inc., which last month announced the shipment of its 50 millionth handset worldwide, BeVocal Inc. and Nuance Communications Inc., formerly ScanSoft. VoiceSignal has inked deals with Motorola Inc. and Nokia Corp.; BeVocal powers a “Voice Store” for Cingular Wireless L.L.C.
Nuance-a 14-year-old veteran of the voice recognition industry-offers both handset-based and network-based speech-recognition software and has deals with T-Mobile USA Inc., Verizon Wireless and Virgin Mobile USA L.L.C., among others.
Each player hopes to help carriers use voice searches to offer bundles of content and applications to subscribers, exposing a subscriber searching for a ringtone by a certain band to images and full-track downloads from the group. And while the technology is still not flawless-a recent demonstration of Promptu’s offering required repeating words or phrases at times-developers hope consumers will prefer talking to the click-and-wait, click-and-wait experience most searches require.
And although Promptu hopes that its years of experience in cable TV gives it a leg up in wireless, the company’s leaders acknowledged that the playing field is wide open.
“Trying to pick a winner in voice-activated services at this point is like trying to pick a winner in the auto industry in 1910,” said Bruce.
