Intel hosts Beijing speech forum
The two-day forum will focus on accelerating speech recognition applications for the Chinese market.
Intel and other companies back speech recognition applications because they have the potential to be a "killer app" that needs powerful PCs to work well. Additionally, China is seen as a huge possible market for speech recognition, because the language's complex character system does not lend itself easily to touch typing.
"In China, they have difficulty in getting character input into a Western keyboard," said Rob Sullivan, director of content technologies for Intel. "This is a way to increase the adoption of PCs in China."
Dragon Systems, Microsoft, Lernout and Hauspie, and IBM, whose ViaVoice 98 is the first available Chinese speech recognition application, will join Intel in the presentation.
Intel is an investor in CNET: The Computer Network, publisher of New.com.