Nuance launches mobile developer program: Will all apps be speech enabled?

Nuance Communications on Wednesday launched a software development kit designed to bring speech and voice recognition to Apple iOS and Android apps.

With the move, Nuance will create a self-service site so mobile developers can use the technology found in Dragon Dictation and Search apps and the Vocalizer text-to-speech.

The software developer kit (SDK) supports English, French, European Spanish, German, Italian and Japanese for dictation and search.

The big question here is whether app developers will view voice recognition as an effort worth their time. There are a few converging trends that may indicate that it's time for more focus on speech by developers. Among them:

• Automobiles are increasingly becoming app environments. Ford, Toyota and others are starting to app enable the interiors of their cars. This connectivity will mean that smartphones and cars will increasingly be intertwined. Speech technology is the only way to applify cars safely.
• Speech apps are starting to surface from the likes of Amazon, Dictionary.com and SpeechTrans.
• Voice to text technology is becoming standard in many smartphones phones.

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