Poor user interfaces
Currently, most mobile users would rather speak to someone than scroll and press a thumb-wheel or rely on a screen the size of a postage stamp. As Adam Anger, business manager at Microsoft Europe's Mobile Solutions Unit, says, '[Mobile] users are not finding it easy to access a device via 'tap' in some situations.'
Thus many of the potential advantages of the mobile Internet are outweighed by a poor user interface. A voice call can be conducted without using hands or eyes, but PDAs tend to need both. So vendors of mobile Internet software, as well as some hardware suppliers, are hoping that voice I/O technology can help them to compete. Many mobile component suppliers and software vendors are now seeking, or developing, technologies for speech input.
Microsoft has spent years trying to build speech input and output into its desktop computing applications. In October 1999, in an effort to beef up its Speech Application Interface (SAPI), the company acquired Entropic, which is based in Cambridge. Entropic gives Microsoft access to some of the speech recognition technology developed at Cambridge University.
By April 2000 enough progress had been made for Microsoft to announce that SAPI 5.0 would support the Lernout & Hauspie ASR1600 speech recognition engine and TTS3000 text-to-speech engine. The SAPI 5.0 Software Development Kit included SAPI middleware and Lernout & Hauspie's ASR and TTS engines, as well as source code, tools and documentation. While Microsoft was distributing tools to developers of speech-enabling applications, the firm was also carrying out work to voice-enable mobile devices.
In March, Bill Gates demonstrated a device called MiPad. The MiPad ran on Windows CE and was linked to an NT server. It used a continuous speech recognition engine with a 64,000 word vocabulary. But, as Anger explains, the MiPad was not a pure voice-activated device. 'It had a tap-and-talk interface  providing the best of both technologies,' he says. Basically this means that a built-in microphone is activated when a field is selected. By combining tap with talk, the number of possible instructions that the device can expect to hear at any one time is narrowed down.
Microsoft has not yet announced a date for incorporating speech technology into mobile products. The uncertain future of Lernout & Hauspie, currently under threat of bankruptcy, also complicates the situation.
When they do appear, early products will have limitations. As well as probably requiring the use of a plastic stylus, Microsoft's speech engine may also be dependent on a connection to a server. This could prove unsuitable for users who want to use voice technology to initiate or reinstate a connection to the network.
Meanwhile, UK-based mobile technology specialist TTPCom is working on speech recognition that can be embedded in the client, using Smartspeak from Art. Until recently Art had specialised in handwriting recognition, but in April TTPCom took Art's speech technology and put it in the GSM chipset that it co-developed with Analog Devices. The chipset enables users to dial a number using natural speech.
TTPCom is already working with the next version of Smartspeak, which has a larger vocabulary. 'Not 64,000 words, but certainly measured in 100s,' says Richard Fry, sales director of TTPCom. The software will be stored in flash memory. 'This will enable us to get the product to the market a lot faster,' says Fry, who adds that the next version of Smartspeak could be on the market in the second quarter of this year.
