Sun gets its voice heard

Sun Microsystems is to move into the voice recognition market by partnering with two speech experts, and has signed US telecoms giant BellSouth as its first major customer.

Carriers will be able to add the VoiceTone system, developed in conjunction with speech specialists BeVocal and Nuance, to their networks and offer mobile customers applications such as voice portals, voice operated dialling and spoken emails over the phone.

Shahran Moradpour, senior director of market development at Sun, said that VoiceTone allows users to "accomplish day-to-day tasks, get information over the web and access personalised content all with speech - the most natural form of communication".

Kelsey analyst Mark Plakias indicated that the combination of Sun, BeVocal and Nuance would benefit carriers. "[This] is the right answer to the carrier industry's [mobile] needs," he said.

VoiceTone represents the latest assault by Sun on arch rival Microsoft. Sun's StarOffice competes with Microsoft Office, and the company is developing internet access hardware to vie with Microsoft's Passport authorisation tool.

Hewlett Packard, Nortel, Compaq and Comverse are also developing voice recognition systems.