To all,
I took refuge from the heat in the basement of the university library one evening last week and read an old copy of the Wall Street Transcript. The date was April 14/97. Three analysists were discussing voice recognition software cos'
"Near term, some interesting voice recognition applications will be hitting the market, particularly in large-vocabulary recognition, stock name or ticker symbol and get a price back in reply or place an order are examples. Probably the leading company in this area of enabling technologies and speech recognition in particular is a company called Voice Control Systems out of Dallas. They are introducing this year some unique applications, one of which is a product that we're beta-testing in our offices here. It is designed to allow callers to reach individuals in our office by speaking a name...........
MR. SMITH: Voice recoggnition solves the problem of the telephone interface, pressing 1 for x or 2 for y. You can greatly expand your applications by using voice recognition ............
MR PADGETT: I think voice recognition is very exciting in that it will lead to new applications such as Schwab's VoiceBroker or flight arrival information, the challange to the companies supplying speech recognition engines - and other than Voice Control they are mainly private companies - is that at least to date, the economic benefit of voice recognition has largely accrued to the system suppliers like Periphonics and Inter Voice and Brite Voice and it hasn't accrued much to those who have developed the core technology. So their challenge , as I see it is to change that economic model, and I'm not sure whether they'll be successful or not.
MR TINGER: Nick, I"ll take that. They are starting to change ............ not really going to change until speaker recognition beocmes more cost effective. Where these companies are going to make money is when they start getting per-unit royalities. Whether it's a video game or a VCR or a microwave oven, you are getting $.10 - $.25 a copy for everyone of those sold. ........Let me give you an example. Voice Control has a single chip solution with OKI semiconductor, but right now it costs about $20 or more! OKI plans on getting the chip down to $4 by the end of the century. When its' $4, suddenly it's worthwhile..................
I got the impression that VCSI is not going to be a trading position any time soon!
best, art |
