A company called iSpeech has launched a free voice recognition and text-to-speech SDK for mobile developers building apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry. During its pre-launch phase, iSpeech saw over 3,000 developers sign up for its service and powered 1 billion conversions in the cloud. Incidentally, 3,000 developers is the same number that Nuance, makers of the paid Dragon SDK,recently advertised themselves, says iSpeech’s CMO Yaron Oren. But that was after significant marketing efforts over the course of 6 months, he added.
The price of the Dragon SDK is a barrier to entry for many developers and businesses, the company believes. iSpeech wants to be the more affordable alternative.
iSpeech on Mobile Goes Freemium
The iSpeech service is free to all mobile developers, and is available to Web developers who want to use the same technology via the iSpeech API and online payment system. On the Web, prices start at $.005 per word, but on mobile it’s free. iSpeech says it may offer some value-added services on mobile in the future.
iSpeech is already used in several well-known apps, including Car & Driver’s Txt U L8r, TeleNav’s Evie, plus the company’s own DriveSafe.ly app, and more. Its SDK’s and API’s provide over 40 text-to-speech voices and include support for over 25 languages. Premium services, like celebrity voices or custom text to speech voices are also available. Developers can also optionally pay for the ability to increase speech recognition performance specific to their use case, when applicable.
Those interested in trying out iSpeech can do so by signing up here.
Update: iSpeech says its FAQ regarding mobile ads was out of date, so we removed the reference to the credit purchasing feature from an earlier version of this post.
