Thursday, September 21, 2006

Voice May Rule Mobile Search

Nokia and Microsoft today announced a collaboration that will integrate Live search into Nokia handsets. The service will have shortcuts to websites so that users won't automatically go through a list of results to get what they want.

While this is helpful, the search companies and telecoms need to up the ante on voice enabled search if they want to capture the mobile user audience. The Voice XML standard for querying and responding via voice has been around for years, and version 2.1 is should be finalized soon, but there's not much noise from the companies with new products.

The diminutive screens and keypads make it very difficult to search on a phone, and since people spend most of their time talking into the phones anyway, the interface couldn't be more natural. There are services that let you call a number to do a search, but you should be able to get basic answers over IP without waiting for a connection or paying for each query.

Whichever search company can nail this down will own the mobile market.

Posted By John Gartner at 02:08 PM
Permanent Link: Voice May Rule Mobile Search | Comments (0)

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