I wrote a deployment on speech applications in the warehouse this month but I never really understood how under-the-radar that particular market was until I sat at a lunch table with people from Tellme (a subsidiary of Microsoft, I’m now obligated to mention on pain of death) and Vocollect.

The Tellme people, whose panel on multimodality was one of the most heavily attended, were ALL OVER the Vocollect rep.

It went like this:

Vocollect: We work with warehouses mostly. It’s a pretty niche market.

Tellme: How much do you guys pull in annually?

Vocollect: Around $100 million.

(Thunk of jaws hitting table)

Tellme: That’s a pretty good niche market.

It’s worth noting that the Vocollect rep wasn’t at Voice Search as a speaker (though that makes sense, since his company doesn’t exactly do voice search. On the other hand, neither does Loquendo, which is a supporting sponsor).

Goes to show that some very impressive and useful speech applications don’t get a lot of play because they’re simply not considered sexy by the industry. It’s kind of like high school.