SPEECH RECOGNITION specialist, Nuance, has managed to combine three of the cellular industry's current favourite obsessions - music downloads, search and advanced UI (User Interface).

The company demonstrated to the INQ a music search engine which uses voice recognition to identify a record track which the consumer is attempting to find.

For demonstration purposes, the system which Nuance has built references around a million tracks. According to Nuance's business development director, John West, the company is in talks with at least one US mobile operator to offer the service.

Music search forms just one part of a demonstration suit which Nuance calls Mobilesearch 2 and currently runs only on Symbian based mobile phones.

When the demonstration system recognises the track you are seeking, it offers the opportunity for the searcher to listen to a thirty second clip of the track – just to ensure you have the right one.

After that, the system offers the consumer the chance to purchase the discovered track. The demon also illustrated how the whole service could be advert funded – with album covers of featured artists being on display in the background.

West also reckons that mobile operators will like the system because it operates as a client/server application with the consumer needing to make a data call to discover the music.

There also the possibility that a local search facility could be built into this product. So the app could search the handset's memory and memory card for a track before initiating a call. µ

L'INQ
www.nuance.com