Motorola enters voice-enabled world

A new Motorola division plans to introduce a platform this week for voice recognition-based services, Motorola representatives told Telephony.

Although the announcement of the platform, called Myosphere, falls behind launches of similar products by other companies, Motorola officials believe it could open the market for voice recognition products.

"We're focused on building a common platform so application developers can write to it," said May Pao, director of business management for Motorola's new Internet and connectivity services division. To date, the lack of a common network architecture has made that task difficult, she said. Myosphere is compatible with all wireless and wireline technologies, said Pao.

Motorola thinks carriers may readily adopt Myosphere, more so than other available products, including Wildfire or General Magic's Portico, because it will be offered on a wholesale service bureau basis-carriers won't have to invest in an expensive deployment across their networks.

"Carriers say they are not interested in spending millions of dollars to deploy in a risky, young, immature market," Pao said.

Myosphere currently accepts voice instructions to place calls or pages, check voice mail and access information services-actions that respond to consumer demands for control of their communications and for services that allow them to drive while using a mobile phone, according to Motorola.

In its current form, Myosphere pales in comparison with services such as General Magic's Portico, said Alan Reiter, president of Wireless Internet & Mobile Computing. He acknowledged, though, that Myosphere may appeal to some operators. Most studies predict a robust market for speech-enabled services, which will likely support several players and a range of options, said Reiter.