| Come 2007, you can send SMS by speaking over your mobile phone. You only need to give a voice command to your handset to send the SMS to the desired destination instead of labouring to key in the text messages.
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| Telecommunication vendor Motorola, is getting into the hitherto unexplored geographies in the country targeting the less tech-savvy rural and semi-literate masses.
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| Part of its 'connect the next billion' campaign, the company is soon going to deliver its range of handsets with voice command SMSing facility.
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| Motorola Global Software Group (GSG) is working on a technology that will support English and all Indian languages through text and voice recognition.
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| "We expect the first product that recognises voice command in English to hit the market in 2007. The development of the software for supporting the Indian languages is presently underway at the Motorola GSG R&D centres in Bangalore and Hyderabad," Mohan Kumar, vice president and general manager, embedded products and systems division, Motorola told Business Standard.
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| He, however, did not divulge any timeframe for releasing the products that support voice command in Indian (local) languages.
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| The phones will also have voice-based functional access with which one can access phone books, add new entries and make calls, without using the keypads.
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| He said the company planned to use speech recognition software and was working with the Indian Foreign Language Institute, Mysore, to collect samples of voices to create a speech database.
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| "The most important thing is that of getting the accent right and the same is applicable both to English and Indian languages. We are trying to collect as many samples as possible. While the accuracy level for discreet word is not a big problem, improving the accuracy level for continuous word recognition is a challenge," Kumar pointed out.
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| The company plans to introduce the features in the low-end category. "The handsets will be priced cheaper as the target audience is the rural and semi-urban people, elders or people with poor eyesight," he added.
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| The company is looking at adding some specific features to the low-end category handsets like FM radio, torch light and brighter display.
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| "We understand that many people in villages have poor eyesight and they need brighter display and bigger fonts. We are using a new type of display called 'e-ink' which provides a high contrast level and the contents can be read clearly even in bright sunlight," Kumar added.
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| Motorola has six R&D centres in India that provide 40 per cent of the total software requirement of Motorola worldwide. Bangalore is the single largest centre of Motorola for R&D globally. |
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