Mobile speech recognition startup Vlingo on Wednesday
said its application, which allows mobile phone users to speak instructions
rather than type, is now available for Apple's iPhone.
Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Vlingo, which has so far
taken $26.5 million in venture funds from Yahoo, Charles River, and Sigma Partners,
introduced the application for Research In Motion’s BlackBerry smartphones back
in June. The iPhone version can now be downloaded from Apple’s App Store.
Two-year-old Vlingo’s application competes with Google
Mobile App, which also allows mobile phone users to speak rather than input instructions
on the phone’s keyboard. (Google
Embellishes iPhone Apps)
Using Vlingo, users can dial contacts, access
applications such as Google Maps, update their Facebook and Twitter information,
and search the web through voice commands.
When a user speaks into the Vlingo’s pop-up screen, a
network path is opened to Vlingo’s servers where the voice recognition occurs
and the words are returned to the phone’s screen.
Vlingo’s consumer product is free. The company generates
revenues from application providers such as Yahoo, along with device
manufacturers, and network operators which use Vlingo’s service as a product
feature.
“They pay us on a per-user per-month basis to provide the
speech functionality but we also have some usage based contracts. It all
depends on the customer,” said Dave Grannan, CEO of Vlingo.