Vlingo refocuses mobile on voice

According to recent studies, even users of the much-hyped iPhone have trouble entering text into their handsets. That's why Vlingo, (not Vringo [1]) has come out of stealth-mode to make every text box on the mobile screen voice-enabled. Speech recognition veterans Mike Phillips and John Nguyen founded Vlingo, which has just raised $6.5 million in VC from Charles River Ventures. Phillips previously founded Speech Works, which Scan Soft acquired. Scan Soft then acquired Nuance, but kept the Nuance name. Phillips left Nuance to found Vlingo.

Vlingo's interface allows users to speak or type into a text box that has been outfitted with the company's technology. The application then sends the voice clip to Vlingo's server where the voice recognition software converts it to text. The user can then edit the text version if needed and hit send, search, etc. depending on whether it's an SMS, voice-enabled search request or others. Vlingo told FierceWireless its biggest competitor is Tellme Networks, which Microsoft acquired [2] for some $800 million, according to reports.

For more on Vlingo:
- read this write-up [3] over at GigaOm