Nuance (News - Alert) Communications, a provider of speech solutions, announced this week that it has joined the Open Handset Alliance.


The Open Handset Alliance is a group of more than 30 technology and mobile companies, which have come together to solve mobile platform fragmentation and escalating software development costs. The alliance will work on developing applications on the Android platform. Members of the alliance include HTC (News - Alert), Motorola, T-Mobile and Sprint-Nextel, Qualcomm, and others.

Steve Chambers, president of mobile and consumer services division at Nuance, commented that his company’s participation in the Open Handset Alliance (News - Alert) will help Nuance to capitalize on the intense interest carriers and device manufacturers have shown for mobile speech technologies and services.

“Working with the Alliance will introduce speech applications to a global developer community and open new markets for our mobile business. We believe our collective efforts can unleash the true potential of the mobile phone and create opportunities for Nuance to accelerate the adoption of mobile speech,” said Chambers in a press release.

Chambers added that Nuance's contribution to Android, an open and free mobile platform, will help developers to build mobile applications with basic voice command functionality in US English.

The company will be offering a complete portfolio of language models, services, applications and advanced technology programs, including: Next-Generation Mobile Speech Technologies and Tools. Chambers added that developers will have the opportunity to build on the basic speech foundation within Android by upgrading to state-of-the-art speech engines and components, language packs, and tools based on Nuance's speech technology.

“Nuance offers developers the professional services needed to develop, optimize, and deploy robust mobile speech applications built on top of the Android platform,” added Chambers.

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Anshu Shrivastava is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To see more of her articles, please visit her columnist page.