Airtel's Voice Recognition Based Service for just Rs 2 a minute

 Bharti Airtel today announced launch of a speech recognition-based service in partnership with Nuance Communications at a price of Rs 2 per minute. 

Airtel subscribers can now dial a single number to access a host of services, including hello tunes and news among others, against the current practice of calling different numbers for different offerings. 

This speech recognition-based service, 'One Number, One Voice', can be accessed by Airtel mobile users in India by dialling 54321 and customers will be charged Rs 2 per minute for it, Bharti Airtel and Nuance Communications said in a joint statement. 

"As we join hands with Nuance Communications for the launch of our ''One Number, One Voice'' service. We look forward to leveraging their expertise towards delivering an improved ''search and discover content'' experience for Airtel mobile customers across India," Chief Marketing Officer at Bharti Airtel Shireesh Joshi said in the statement. 

The speech recognition service on the offer includes Hello Tunes, Airtel Radio, News, Sports and Jokes among others, the company said in a statement. 

The service, which can distinguish between regular callers and first-time callers, offering a customised caller experience wherein novice callers get more hand-holding whereas frequent callers are offered short-cuts, the statement added 

The service currently supports English, Hindi, Tamil and Malayalam and will be rolled out in other languages subsequently. 

'One Number, One Voice'' is available for Airtel customers across Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Chennai, Kerala, Chandigarh and Uttar Pradesh. 

"We are experiencing an unprecedented demand for voice services, as they provide consumers with a fast and intuitive way to access a broad range of content," said Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager, mobile division, Nuance Communications.source

One Numer, One Voice Service From Airtel and Nuance

From a Bollywood number as a hello tune to updates about cricket matches, voice-based services have been offering numerous options to users in the Indian mobile phone segment. Bharti airtel and Nuance Communications have revealed a new service dubbed ‘One Numer, One Voice’ to satiate their customers in the country with enhanced precision.

This innovatively crafted service can be expedient for airtel mobile subscribers across the landscape. Thanks to the service, users will simply need to dial a single number, 54321, for accessing all voice-based services. It has been engineered as a single destination for changing Hello Tunes, listening to airtel Radio along with jokes. This initiative will also facilitate customers to receive news and sports updates as well as their daily astrological predictions and more.

Shireesh Joshi, Chief Marketing Officer-Mobile Services, Bharti airtel, explained “At Bharti airtel, we are constantly looking for ways of delivering the best user experience for our 150 million plus customers across the country and accounting for their diverse preferences in language and relative comfort in interacting by voice or text. Our ‘One Number, One Voice’ service provides our customers with the dual benefit of a single number of access for VAS services and the ease ofvoice recognition with multiple language options – giving him a simple and improved service experience. Today, as we join hands with Nuance Communications for the launch of our ‘One Number, One Voice’ service – we look forward to leveraging their expertise towards delivering an improved ‘search and discover content’ experience for airtel mobile customers across India.”

The new offering has been powered by Nuance Communications’ Recognizer 9.0 speech recognition technology. The company also revealed that an extensive pilot project was undertaken in Kerala for almost a year. The results and feedback from the population in the region are said to have helped it for delivering the refined service. Besides, the main menu of this innovation has been designed by incorporating the inputs derived from this research.

“We’re experiencing an unprecedented demand for voice services, as they provide consumers with a fast and intuitive way to access a broad range of content,” remarked Michael Thompson, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Mobile Division, Nuance Communications. “Bharti airtel’s One Number, One Voice service is an incredibly innovative initiative that brings the power of voice to millions of consumers across India, providing access to exciting content-driven voice services through a single number and simple voice commands.”

Touted as the first application to have integrated the user interfaceguidelines and framework created by Nuance, this service renders a comprehensive experience to its users. Further, the company disclosed that the intuitiveness of the service is capable of distinguishing between regular callers and those using it for the first time. This ability helps it to offer a customized caller service, enabling frequent users to adopt short cuts whereas new callers can expect a detailed reception.

The One Number, One Voice is available for airtel customers across Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chennai, Tamil Nadu and Chandigarh at Rs. 2 per minute charge. The service currently supports Hindi, English, Malayalam and Tamil and will be soon offered in other languages as well.source

Self-Service Mobile Developer Program by NUANCE

Nuance Communications, Inc. today announced that it is providing access to the Dragon Mobile SDK for iOS and Android via a new self-service website as part of tThis initiative will enable mobile developers to leverage the powerful dictation and voice search capabilities at the core of the successful Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search apps, as well as Nuance’s trusted Vocalizer text-to-speech (TTS).

The Dragon Mobile SDK is now available through the Nuance Mobile Developer Program for Apple iOS 4.0 (iPhone/iPad/iPod touch) and for many devices running Android 2.1 and higher versions. The SDK currently supports US and UK English, European Spanish, European French, German, Italian and Japanese for dictation and search, with additional languages to be added through the end of the year. TTS capabilities, on the other hand, exist for more than 35 languages including Indian English and Hindi. 

All those developers working in India on applications that are ported to the US, European or Japanese iTunes store or the Android Market can now leverage the power of Dragon Mobile SDK for rapid inclusion of voice recognition into their applications. This is all possible through the new self service developer portal which provides instant access to easy-to-integrate prepackaged wrappers and widgets. Developers also have access to an on-line forum for additional support, a variety of code samples and full documentation. Nuance’s sales and sales engineering staff in India will also help in providing responses for the developer’s queries and facilitate product demonstrations for developers, when required.

“The mobile application explosion is in flight with Apple nearing 10 billion downloads and Android apps expanding rapidly,” said Sunny Rao, Managing Director, India and South East Asia, Nuance Communications. “We’ve created an amazingly simple way for developers to innovate privately and securely on the two fastest growing platforms in the world. India has a thriving developer’s community on the iOS as well as the Android platform, and we are positive that the Mobile Developer Program will witness great traction among those developers focusing on the export markets of the US, Europe and Japan, ” he added. 

Many developers have already experienced the power of the Dragon Mobile SDK for their apps, including Siri, Price Check by Amazon, Ask for iPhone, aisle411, Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com, and SpeechTrans. 
Nuance Mobile Developer Program Pricing

Developers can download the Dragon Mobile SDK and have access to the cloud-based speech services for 90 days absolutely free. And once ready for market distribution, developers have tiered pricing options to accommodate their unique needs and those of their applications. Nuance also offers a range of developer customization programs including specialized language models and application optimization. To learn more about the Dragon Mobile SDK and supported devices, please visit: http://dragonmobile.nuancemobiledeveloper.com.

Nuance Launches Self-Service Mobile Developer Program

BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) today announced that it is providing access to the Dragon Mobile SDK for iOS and Android via a new self-service website as part of the Nuance Mobile Developer Program. Now mobile developers are able to quickly and easily leverage the powerful dictation and voice search capabilities at the core of the successful Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search apps, as well as Nuance’s trusted Vocalizer text-to-speech (TTS).

“The Dragon Mobile SDK has allowed us to quickly and easily voice-enable our Dictionary.com app for both iPhone and Android, giving our consumers an amazing voice search experience across two unique platforms”

The Dragon Mobile SDK is now available through the Nuance Mobile Developer Program for Apple iOS 4.0 (iPhone/iPad/iPod touch) and for many devices running Android 2.1 and higher. The SDK currently supports US and UK English, European Spanish, European French, German, Italian and Japanese for dictation and search, with additional languages to be added through the end of the year. TTS capabilities exist for more than 35 languages.
The Nuance Mobile Developer Program gives developers instant access to easy-to-integrate prepackaged wrappers and widgets for rapid inclusion of voice recognition into their applications, all through a self-service website. Developers also have access to an on-line forum for additional support, a variety of code samples and full documentation.
“The mobile application explosion is in flight with Apple nearing 10 billion downloads and Android apps expanding rapidly,” said Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager, Nuance Mobile. “We’ve created an amazingly simple way for developers to innovate privately and securely on the two fastest growing platforms in the world.”
Many developers have already experienced the power of the Dragon Mobile SDK for their apps, including Siri, Price Check by Amazon, Ask for iPhone, aisle411, Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com, and SpeechTrans.
Nuance Mobile Developer Quotes

• “Integrating Nuance’s intuitive voice recognition brought a new level of user interaction to our Ask for iPhone question and answer service. Finding information is incredibly easy when you can simply speak a question versus having to type it in,” said Tony Gentile, senior vice president, products, Ask.com US.
• “Voice-enabling our app was simple with the Dragon Mobile SDK, letting people easily look up words that they've heard but don't know how to spell. And for many of our users, speaking directly to the dictionary is an intuitive and enjoyable experience," said Miles Kronby, chief product officer of digital, Merriam-Webster.
• “The Dragon Mobile SDK has allowed us to quickly and easily voice-enable our Dictionary.com app for both iPhone and Android, giving our consumers an amazing voice search experience across two unique platforms,” said Lisa Cross-Sullivan, GM Mobile, Dictionary.com

Nuance Mobile Developer Program Pricing
Developers can download the Dragon Mobile SDK and have access to the cloud-based speech services for 90 days absolutely free. And once ready for market distribution, developers have tiered pricing options to accommodate their unique needs and those of their applications. Nuance also offers a range of developer customization programs including specialized language models and application optimization. To learn more about the Dragon Mobile SDK and supported devices, please visit: http://dragonmobile.nuancemobiledeveloper.com.
Dragon has long been a leading speech recognition application on the desktop, used by millions of people around the world. Nuance has launched an array of Dragon applications across a variety of mobile platforms including iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Phone 7, and more. To learn more, visit www.dragonmobileapps.com.
About Nuance Mobile
Nuance Mobile builds innovative, intelligent and intuitive touch and speech interfaces to simplify and enhance the way people interact with mobile devices, applications, and services. Nuance Mobile solutions make mobile devices and in-car systems easier to use, automate customer self-service, and optimize the access and discovery of even the most advanced mobile applications and content – regardless of technical know-how, location, environment, or physical and literacy capabilities.
About Nuance Communications, Inc.
Nuance is a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications and professional services. For more information, please visit: nuance.com.
Nuance and the Nuance logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States of America and/or other countries. All other company names or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
The statements in this press release relating to future plans, events or services, are forward-looking statements which are subject to specific risks and uncertainties. There are a number of factors which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those indicated in such forward looking statements, including fluctuations in demand for the Nuance products, and the continued development of Nuance products. The reader is warned not to rely on these forward-looking statements without reservation, since these are simply reflections of the current situation. Nuance disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements as a result of developments occurring after the date of this document. source