[DNS] expensive for the individual and I don't know anyone that uses it for any length of time.
I don't know that it's so expensive. I think I paid about $50 on Amazon [with rebate] and have seen similar deals at Costco. It's great for dictating general purpose things, but once you try doing anything work-related, unless you are a novelist, it tends to require quite a bit of specialized vocabulary training, which takes a bit of patience by the user. Like most obstacles, it's also, of course, an opportunity, and NUAN has begun to capitalize on it by going after these big verticals like Medical and Law with pretty good results. But, for example, when I dictate XLF (the financial ETF) it transcribes this as "picks LF" and QQQ as "queue queue queue" until I train it, which seems to take about 20 seconds per new word. Once it's trained it's good to go and remembers it. I believe there is another training method where you simply feed it documents using these words but I have not yet mastered it. Obviously, if there is not an open source community developing around the application, it may just not have the traction we would like to see in a killer app.
In summary, I like the potential for the application and its extension into embedded devices of all kinds and I do think that NUAN is doing the right things and working with the right players to accomplish this. I think the biggest risk might come from an aggressive behemoth like a Nokia with a bigger budget that decides that it must dominate this arena. Of course, that may make NUAN a takeover play, but as with TIVO, it takes an expensive and time-consuming process of litigation to firmly establish the true extent of a company's IP, and even then, the valuation is highly uncertain. VR has been around for a long time and lots of companies and academic groups are working on it. The key in the stock market, of course, is turning it into killer apps and products that people will want to actually buy. VR is quite an effective tool today for doing important things while driving, such as using GPS or cell phone and it will become more ubiquitous tomorrow. So why am I typing this right now instead of dictating? Go figure -- habit, I guess.
I'll bite.
I'm not trying to convince you of the merits of this thing and I really have no idea how a general slowdown in the economy is going to impact sales. However, do consider that if you are a long-term investor, recessions are a great time to pick up beaten down bagains. Do your own homework as to whether this qualifies as one. It's suitability really depends a lot on your own particular circumstances.
Sam |
