Watching the Startups: Voicemail to Text
<<<... “Voicemail-to-text is the missing piece of the unified communications puzzle,” said Richard Stern, senior vice president of global product marketing for SpinVox. “Users gain the benefit of text-based technology, including searchability and the ability to deal with messages on their own time. If I’m in a meeting I can now check my voicemail slyly under the table and tap in quick reply.” Stern believes that as word gets out and demand mushrooms, voicemail-to-text has the potential to become ubiquitous in as few as 12 to 24 months. Right now, however, the market is still in its infancy and analysts haven’t even gotten around to sizing it. Ho with Current Analysis says that from what he has seen thus far, the speech recognition technology driving these services is good enough for the standard business person.
All three of the major vendors claim a 95 percent accuracy rate or better. The real debate is whether users will be willing to pay extra for voicemail after years of having the service baked into the typical phone bill, Ho says. “The question is how to wean them off the free stuff,” Ho said. “There are certainly going to be a lot of people who say, well I like it but I don't like it enough to pay for 10 dollars a month.” Ho believes that there is still a great deal of uncertainty in the market when it comes to service delivery and subscription models. This is one of the key differentiators between SimulScribe, CallWave and SpinVox, which each has its own approach to spreading voicemail-to-text within the marketplace. SimulScribe has chosen to go primarily direct to consumer, with occasional deals such as the one that it brokered with Vonage in April 2007. Its product is a pure voicemail-to-text offering with multiple tiers based on the number of voicemails processed each month. ... more >>>