LHSPF and MSFT will have the US talking to the Internet NOW I wonder how
Heitmann and JVWEB fit into this LOL , along with GTE and DWEB
echnology Coverage
Lernout Will Have United States Talking To The
Internet
January 18, 1999 - 06:42:43 CENTRAL EUROPEAN TIME
By Andrew Hay NEW YORK (Reuters)
et me a $100-a-night room in central Paris, and step on it." This
is the sort of thing speech recognition software leader Lernout &
Hauspie expects us to be telling computers linked to the Internet
within a few years. In an interview this week, company president Jo
Lernout said software that transforms every-day speech into computer
commands - natural language technology - will simplify the way we use
the Internet. He said the company, based in both Belgium and
Massachusetts, is well positioned to supply the products to let us talk to
the Web. This is especially the case as the Internet becomes a central
marketplace for people to buy, sell and trade goods and services
worldwide. "Natural language understanding will finally deal with this
overload of information on the Internet," Lernout said of how such
technology can allow computer users to ask for and receive relevant
information. The importance of this technology has been emphasized by
Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, who for the past year has referred to
speech technology as the next "paradigm shift" in computing. Over the
past year, Lernout & Hauspie has been working jointly with Microsoft
Corp. to develop voice processing technology for use in the next
generation of the Windows computer operating system -- Windows
2000. The Microsoft chairman is fond of predicting that eventually most
PC users will be just as likely to use their voices as their keyboards to
interact with computers. Lernout has more than 700 researchers
working to integrate speech recognition technology into personal
computers, portable phones and computers that feed information to the
Internet. The technology lets people do away with keyboards, keypads
and computer mice and use their voices to give PC commands. As the
price of technology has plummeted, and PC processing power
exploded, its sophistication has multiplied. Hardware and software
makers face the dilemma of either making products easier to use and
more accessible or seeing sales stagnate. Full natural language
recognition - computers understanding natural speech - is still some
years away. But PCs are already at the stage where they can understand
natural language in a given area, say a driver asking a car PC for
directions. In the case of the Internet, Lernout expects to produce
recognition and translation programs that allows a person to pinpoint
information using voice commands. He sees a search - say for a
discount hotel in Paris - taking minutes, instead of hours as Lernout &
Hauspie's speech understanding, synthesis and translation products are
woven into the Net. Lernout & Hauspie has focused on so-called
industry-specific or niche markets with automated call directory or
medical dictation systems, and then licensing the technology to firms like
AT&T, Novell Inc. and Microsoft Corp. The company's rivals in this
emerging sector are IBM, soon-to-go-public Dragon Systems, Fonix
and Philips Electronics NV . With the market for automated directories
and attendants reaching maturity, and the Internet sector heating up, the
potential profits for speech technology are huge. Research company
Voice Information Associates estimates the current market for speech
recognition products to be around $700 million and set to grow to $5
billion by 2001 and $8 billion by 2003. While speech recognition has
been around for more than 20 years, Lernout & Hauspie's technology
has benefited from advances in the power of computer chips to process
data and improvements in databases that store up to 100,000 words
and algorithms that translate voices into digital data. Shares of Lernout
& Hauspie were virtually unchanged at $39.62 in Nasdaq stock
exchange trading Friday afternoon.
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