Voice-driven mobile search - more than a whisper

Thought-leaders such as Google in search are known to consider that the killer enabler of mobile search is, wait for it, voice! Actually mobile search (I'm talking here about mobile phones not mobility as in laptops) is much more widespread than generally known in places like the US.

Nevertheless, it has to be true that a great voice interface would make mobile search potentially ubiquitous - whether searching on-deck or off-deck.

Aside from Google the traditional speech solutions companies are trying to claim this space. Their problem is that know very little about the mobile phone ecosystem, but they can learn quickly. For example Nuance Communications recently agreed to acquire MobileVoiceControl, an Ohio provider of speech-enabled mobile search and messaging services (for an undisclosed amount).

Nuance recently launched their Nuance® Mobile Speech Platform - an architecture of tools and components providing mobile application developers.

With applications designed on the Nuance Mobile Speech Platform, users can speak natural queries to find ringtones, locate the nearest Starbucks, search the Web, or dictate a complete SMS or email ... thereby eliminating the need to “thumb” in text using predictive technology or mini QWERTY keyboards.

We don't know where Microsoft is heading with voice search, but we know that they regard mobile search as a high priority, so they are no doubt weighing up acqusitions:

"In recent years the search box has fundamentally changed the way people interact with the Internet, but we have only just begun to scratch the surface for what search and live Internet services can do in the mobile space," said Steve Berkowitz, senior vice president of the Online Services Group at Microsoft.

Perhaps one of the companies they are looking at is VoiceBox who recently appointed an experienced industry CSO - Victor Melfi. Melfi says that VoiceBox has paid particular attention to solving "the problem of the mobile device interface" and that's where he sees their advantage. The key is in having an embedded application that works seamlessly and flawlessly and one with which you can convince the mobile handset makers to risk deploying - and all at a miniscule price per handset. 

But the West is by no means alone in progressing mobile voice search. Alvin Wang Graylin the CEO and CoFounder of Chinese mobile company minfo writes me that as a Natural language mobile search service in China minfo works on both SMS and WAP.

We offer free search services for a broad range of topics nationwide to consumers throughout china. Not only do we offer natural language search, we also offer multi-language support, where users can input queries in Chinese, pinyin or English, and they can even mix the languages in a single query.

With minfo's offering there is no software to download, no command to remember and no syntax to follow. At the moment minfo interprets natural language text, and Alvin tells me that voice search is in the labs - release date not yet available. Stay tuned to Goobile to learn more about minfo and China - the world's largest mobile phone and mobile search market.

Is there a mobile search item that you think we should feature? Email tips@goobile.com. Thanks!

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