iSpeech Drives Application to iPhone

The phone rings while you are speeding down the highway at 50 mph. Answering the call can be difficult and even illegal in some cases, such as returning a text. In response to such scenarios, iSpeech developed DriveSafe.ly, which now runs on the Apple iPhone.The iSpeech voice recognition and text-to-speech capabilities enable users to hear and verbally respond to text messages, emails and Tweets. Once an incoming message is read aloud, an employee can replay it, send a response, or return the call. DriveSafe.ly, which had been available for Research in Motion BlackBerry systems and Android smartphones, now runs on the Apple iPhone. The messaging solution comes in either a free or a paid ($13.95 year or $3.95) version. The former supports 25 words, does not include voice response features, offers limited customization, and is advertising based; the latter works with 500 words, features voice response capabilities, offers voice and reading speed customization, and does not present advertisements to the user.

With the rise in usage of smartphones, driving and answering calls has become a hot button issue, one that iSpeech is trying to address. Such solutions could help small and medium businesses avoid problems when employees use their smartphones while driving. The company, which has been in business since 2007 and sells a variety of speech recognition system, has 8 million users. Though its focus seems to be noteworthy, the vendor could struggle as it butts heads with larger, more established speech recognition competitors.