Fonix To Deploy Speech Solutions to a 2.5G Device

SALT LAKE CITY, UT - Fonix Corporation (OTC BB: FONX), a provider of natural-user interface technology for wireless and mobile devices, Internet and telephony systems, and vehicle telematics, announced it will offer Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) and Text-To-Speech (TTS) capabilities on commercially available products that use Texas Instruments' OMAP™ framework. Fonix Speech Solutions, currently deployed in several PDA devices, including Hewlett-Packard's Jornada 928 Wireless Digital Assistant (WDA) slated for release in Europe in the summer of 2002, demonstrate the ability of the OMAP platform to support natural language interface, and opens the door to a wide variety of voice-enabled products and services within the OMAP application environment. Texas Instruments' OMAP platform for wireless processing delivers voice and multimedia enhanced applications for 2.5G and 3G wireless phones, PDAs, and advanced mobile Internet appliances. Fonix Speech Solutions that run on the TI OMAP platform enable users to use their voice to navigate through their devices, to launch and close applications, and to access and dial contacts, all with no voice training required. OMAP developers benefit from TI's fully open OMAP platform, which has been selected by Hewlett-Packard, Nokia, Ericsson, Sony, Palm, NEC, Fujitsu, Sendo, HTC, and others for the companies' 2.5 and 3G wireless devices. "Fonix is a natural fit for the OMAP platform and our developer network. Their highly accurate and speaker-independent speech solutions add a new dimension of power and convenience to applications created within TI's OMAP Developer Network," said Paul Werp, worldwide marketing director for TI's OMAP platform. "Clearly, end users will benefit from voice-enabled applications in the next generation of wireless devices. As wireless device manufacturers continue to develop 2.5G and 3G products powered by TI's high-performance and low power OMAP application processors, Fonix will help developers provide the natural-speech capabilities that will make those products safer and easier to use." "Voice interface is the wave of the future in wireless products. With handheld device manufacturers' deployment of Fonix natural-speech technology using the OMAP platform, voice-enabled mobile applications are taking a huge step forward," said Kurt W. Flygare, Fonix Vice President of Sales. "Fonix ASR and TTS technologies provide the critically small memory footprint necessary for wireless Web devices. Additionally, our speech solutions provide developers and wireless device manufacturers with the essential elements to introduce interactive voice solutions faster and at significantly reduced cost."