The mobile news will not stop! Today, news hit the Web that a 3G iPhone will likely be released this summer. A Bank of America analyst made the prediction: a small build of 3 million phones in May, followed by 8 million phones in June. The release of the 3G phones, which will come equipped with apps from the iPhone SDK (the beta with UI tools was released last week), could also coincide with (finally) speech on the iPhone. According that same report, Apple expects to sell 10 million 3G iPhones — analysts think this is wishful thinking; I tend to disagree. Why? Because everyone I know who owns an iPhone is my age (23), has a job paying less than $40K per year, and is willing to pay lots of money to have the newest Apple product. You can’t argue with the power of Apple Cult.

[Image courtesy of Station-A]

***Update: I got someone from TellMe on the phone. Read about their involvement with the iPhone here.***

Sure, March is the holy month for college basketball (FYI - Ryan is a UCLA fan; I’m an MSU girl), but here at Speech Tech, it’s Mobile Month. Even more news today! The sci/tech feeds at Google News are abuzz with stories about Microsoft partaking in the iPhone’s SDK. No big surprise — Microsoft would be silly not to want a stake in the Apple mobility space (and who doesn’t desperately want Excel spreadsheets at all times?). Though most stories report on the integration of the Office suite into the iPhone, a speech tech company, TellMe, is also rumored to be part of Microsoft’s iPhone app projects.

According to a PCWorld blog post, TellMe’s technology could be integrated into iPhone apps –

“Another group at Microsoft interested in the iPhone is from the voice recognition unit at Microsoft featuring the TellMe software that Microsoft recently acquired. TellMe is currently developing voice recognition software for the Windows Mobile operating system, but the iPhone SDK gives plenty of potential for the iPhone route as well.”

Woohoo! Not only is Nuance still on board with Android, but now we may see speech in the iPhone, as well. This also means we have more fuel for news on this here blog — it gives Ryan something to do aside from give us real-time updates about the Sweet 16. Of course, this is all still a gamble. Microsoft has apparently only been looking at the SDK for a few weeks, according to the same PCWorld blog post. Keep your fingers crossed, speech community.

[Photo illustration courtesy of our own Ryan Joe]

Crush: Developers Answering the Call from iPhone
Why We’re Loving It: We hope that of the 100,000 developers who downloaded the iPhone’s SDK will do something speech-related for the product. Though Google’s Android has been met with interest from companies like Nuance Communications, the iPhone’s fate with speech apps remains unclear. We didn’t get any TTS or STT last time, but maybe a group of speech-happy developers will change all that in coming years. Of course, the overwhelming response to the SDK release (those 100,000 downloads took place within just four days of the release) also brought up fears that some of the downloads came from hackers. For more on that, check out this article from eFluxMedia.

Hex: Directory Assistance - Paid, Ad-Based, or Free - You’ve Gotta Step It Up!
Why We’re Hating: After a conversation with a vendor about directory assistance, I was thinking a lot about how often I have been frustrated beyond belief with DA speech recognition errors. Though I prefer free services (I’m 23. I’m poor.), the inefficient, broad search capabilities irritate me beyond belief. But the real problem? Poor speech recognition, and an insane amount of sensitivity to background noise. When do people typically call DA? When they’re outside. Outside conditions in New York are not what you’d call “serene,” to say the least. In addition, people in bigger cities like NYC or LA seem more likely to tap DA: we have more streets, more stores, and five freaking boroughs. As far as ad-based search goes, I haven’t found that quality improves, even with developers’ increased spending capabilities from the ad support ($$$$$). Paid services? No way. It just reminds me of my grandmother dialing information and being connected on a switchboard operated by Lily Tomlin. Developers: people love DA; people need DA; people want DA. Don’t ruin a good thing.

Holy crap. Big news from Cupertino today! Resident Speech Tech heartthrob Steve Jobs announced that the long-awaited iPhone SDK will be published. You know what this means: let the app games wars begin. Since the iPhone debuted without speech, Apple opening up the floodgates to developers could come as a means for big-name vendors like Nuance to pounce.

For anyone who attended Conversations ‘07, you’ll remember [aside from the 90-degree Boca weather] the short video aired at one of the mobile session opening speeches. In the video, a guy using an iPhone performs various Web searches using his voice — he navigates pages, writes reviews, and gets directions. So while a lot of people in my generation [30-and-under] still aren’t entirely sold on the idea of TTS and STT (I know I’m going to get flack for saying that, but you’re hearing it from a REAL 23-year-old with tons of iPhone-using friends), I’d be interested in seeing how speech heavyweights might take part in the app-building process. And if anyone would use it.

Don’t think I’m too cynical, though — OK, I am. I also enjoy playing devil’s advocate. What do you think about speech + the iPhone? I’m still curious as to the possible implications of that little speech patent Apple released in December ‘07, and how speech recognition could play a part in the next iPhone, or in its SDK.

Related Stories:
- Apple Prepares iPhone SDK [eFM]

[Image: SiliconValleySleuth]