It's interseting that Dragon is still a private company. They seem to have a strong offering. I like their demo's. Seagate did well buying into Dragon. Last year I bought a copy of IBM's ViaVoice and shelfed it as it was horribly in accurate.
I wonder how much longer people will be typing and whether it's actually a useful skill anyway?
I think because Lernout & Hauspie is the most obvious pure play on SR, they get a lot of focus. Their relation to Microsoft is also very valuable. But, I liked Dragon much more than I expected. Their demo was very good.
Speaking with one of the original developers from the old Kurzweil days, it was said that computers still needed about 64M DRAM to get the dication to work it's best. I ask him why they didn't add a one or 2 page document on how easy it is to install memory? He was confused. Normal people would never open a computer and put in a DIMM. I said yes, but perhaps a well constructed simple description could encourage them and they would then have a more robust performance which would be good for everyone.
I think the big factor that many people know, but don't talk about is that many of the dictation packages are purchased and then found unsatisfactory. They don't take the time to teach the software. PC's are under powered. It just doesn't work right out of the box. There is a lot of disappointment.
I saw where Dictaphone is building it's own systems around hand held digital recording that will later feed into a computer. Doctors are the most profitable users of dictation.
Dragon is working with Sony. Have you seen the MiniDisc from Sony. Very cool item. Uses a optical disk that can be rewritten thousands of times. Store a lot of info and seems to be a great choice for dictation. I believe it store 75 minutes of sound. Very small. I want one.
In the end, dictation is often held back by microphones. Good microphones are $200. Then add the cost of a 266+pentium system with 64+ DRAM just to get basic service. That could be a killer for the "Teen" software as they always get Dad's leftovers, don't they?
Here's a company ( Periphonics Corp.) reporting good things. They are the packaging company that sold Schwab's SR based stock quote system, Sears, and American Airlines information. These have been high profile systems that are very indicative of the future of ASR and phone interaction. A very interesting area. They are also being sued by Lucent.
08:37 ET Periphonics Corp. (PERI) 5 1/2: Provider of products and services for call processing solutions release preliminary fiscal Q1 results that are ahead of Wall Street expectations; company expects Q1 net of between $0.07 and $0.09 a share, well ahead of the First Call consensus for a loss of $0.10 a share; in the year-ago period, it earned $0.01 a share. PERI shares indicated 3/8 higher.
Regards,
Mark
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