Mobile phones to come with built-in dictaphones

Mobile phones will soon be built with integrated dictaphones that can be used to send emails, among other things.

Speech products specialist Lernout and Hauspie (L&H) showed off its next generation speech engine at Comdex this week and confirmed that it is working on voice-enabled technologies for mobile phones.

Next year L&H will include a sound filter in its speech engine that gets rid of the inevibtable 'ums' and 'aahs' when we speak. Those words will also be excluded from text when the product is used to dictate email.

L&H said that as consumers demand smaller and lighter mobile phones with minute keyboards as the use of voice for dictation and command becomes widespread. A spokesperson for L&H forecasts that other speech-enabled portable devices, including hand-held computers and Web pads, will appear in the future.

L&H also announced it is teaming up with Symbian Technology to incorporate L&H's International Correctspell spell checker and its Intellifinder voice-retrieval technology on the Symbian platform. Symbian already has deals with Motorola, Ericsson, and Nokia to put its operating system onto mobile phones, the first of which will ship in the spring of 2000.

See also:

L&H buys speech rival Dragon

Speech recognition software vendor Lernout & Hauspie (L&H) has snapped up arch-rival Dragon Systems in a deal worth about $600m (£378m) in stock.  28 Mar 2000

L&H Simply Translating 3.0

Simple by name, simple by nature. If all you want is the gist of a piece written in a foreign language, then this package is perfect. Just don't expect a polished translation.  01 Dec 1999

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