AT&T & Vlingo inked a deal to allow Vlingo to use AT&T’s Watson speech recognition technology to power Vlingo. Watson is supposed to help recognize natural speech so you can talk normally. AT&T will get a minority stake in Vlingo for the deal. This is coming right after Nuance purchased Jott so this seems to be a pretty hot field.
There is an interesting footnote to the whole deal:
AT&T products and services are provided or offered by subsidiaries and affiliates of AT&T Inc. under the AT&T brand and not by AT&T Inc.
I guess that means that AT&T Inc that we are familiar with is not part of the deal… I thought this deal might lead to AT&T preloading Vlingo on their devices but maybe not.
Still anything to improve Vlingo’s already impressive speech recognition is welcome. It might help them justify their $18 price tag.
via Press Release & Vlingo Blog
