11-Nov-2011 11:36

Amazon Now Has Voice-Recognition Capability...

Why Have Amazon Bought Voice-Recognition Capability?

Recent news showing that in late September Amazon, on the quiet, bought a voice-recognition (VRC) startup ‘Yap’ has begun new stories that Amazon wants to build a ‘digital personal assistant’ for its own devices.

A decent VRC tool could be very helpful to its business considering Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s own Kindle Fire and Google’s Android services.

If true, it is believed that this Yap acquisition could help Amazon integrate voice controls and speech recognition services into its online shopping portals and Kindle devices.

Apparently Yap's specialty is high-volume, cloud-based voice transcription, including a literal rendering of voice > text.

These applications could facilitate far simpler purchases for Amazon customers especially from mobile phones where it is faster and easier to 'speak' than to 'type'.

Amazon's purchase of Yap comes at a time when Amazon has it hands full with the launch of Kindle Fire, and experts have been saying that if Amazon wanted voice-recognition tools, it would be healthier to acquire them – together with the relevant software and good people - rather than build the technology themselves from scratch.

Watch this space...