Nuance Extends Mobile Developer Program to China
Nuance Communications has expanded its Nuance Mobile Developer Program to China, expanding the language support of the Dragon Mobile SDK to Mandarin Chinese.
Launched in January, the Nuance Mobile Developer Program enables mobile developers to voice-enable virtually any application for iOS and Android via the self-service Web site, allowing them to leverage the dictation and voice search capabilities at the core of the Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search apps, and Nuance's Vocalizer text-to-speech (TTS).
Since its initial launch in January in the United States and Europe, the Nuance Mobile Developer Program has signed more than 2,500 developers in its first 90 days. In fact, the program has successfully launched dozens of voice-enabled apps globally for iOS and Android, some in just 30 days or less, including Siri, Price Check by Amazon, Ask for iPhone, Merriam-Webster, Dictionary.com, SpeechTrans, AirYell from Avantar, iTranslate from Sonico, Taskmind from Catalyst, and many others.
The Dragon Mobile SDK is available through the Nuance Mobile Developer Program for Apple iOS 4.0 (iPhone/iPad/iPod touch) and for many devices running Android 2.1 and higher. The SDK currently supports Mandarin Chinese, U.S. and U.K. English, European Spanish, European French, German, Italian, and Japanese for dictation and search, with additional languages to be added through the end of the year. TTS capabilities support more than 35 languages.
The Nuance Mobile Developer Program also gives developers instant access to prepackaged wrappers and widgets for rapid inclusion of voice recognition into their applications, all through a self-service Web site. Developers also have access to an on-line forum for additional support, a variety of code samples, and full documentation.
"The success of the Nuance Mobile Developer Program in just its first 90 days has proven that developers and their consumers love the ability to quickly and easily interface with application via voice," said Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager of Nuance Mobile. "This latest expansion into China is very exciting and is just the beginning of what we anticipate to be a globally thriving developer and mobile app ecosystem powered by Dragon."
Developers can download the Dragon Mobile SDK and have access to the cloud-based speech services for 90 days absolutely free. And once ready for market distribution, developers have tiered pricing options to accommodate their unique needs and those of their applications. Nuance also offers a range of developer customization programs, including specialized language models and application optimization.