MSearchGroove

A worthwhile interview in this month’s Fast Company with Mike McCue, co-founder of Tellme Networks, the voice recognition company Microsoft recently snapped up for more than $800 million. (The acquisition is seen as a bid by Microsoft to make its mark in the nascent multimodal mobile search market. But Microsoft has company, as this recent article in WSJ points out. Google has taken the wraps off a voice search app, white-label mobile search provider Medio Systems enables voice-in text-out search on the Verizon Wireless portal, and Yahoo is known to be pondering a voice option for oneSearch – a strategy no doubt supported by two Tellme execs that recently joined the company).

The space is crowding, but that is also an important validation of the technology. Granted, it can deliver less than satisfactory results in crowded rooms etc…but I’ve tried some of the services (V-Enable’s offer didn’t disappoint, for example) and can say with confidence that they have come a long way in a short time. (In fact, I’m devoting a chapter of my upcoming VisionGain report to multimodal search and invite companies in this space to contact me directly.)

In his interview with Fast, Mike tells us why Microsoft chose Tellme as a beachhead in the mobile search market. It seems size matters. Mike claims his company does “more searches on the phone than any other company in the world–upward of 2 billion last year. Google and Yahoo and Microsoft did maybe 100,000 combined. Chump change.” Google was also interested in buying Tellme, but the fit wasn’t right “Google isn’t a platform company. It’s a search-and-ad-space company.”

And where’s the money? Voice-activated search works in a number of scenarios. “In the enterprise segment, it’s a multibillion-dollar market. Directory assistance is another billion or two. That could grow by $10 billion or $15 billion in 5 to 10 years. Personally, I love the iPod; I have about 30,000 songs on mine. But it’s impossible to navigate with that wheel. It’s crying out for speech interface. That could be huge.”

Predictably, mobile search is a better deal for all when it’s paired with mobile advertising. As Mike put it: “It will be ad-supported. It’s going to take time to develop, but it will happen. We will handle the design, but Microsoft is doing a lot of work with ad engines, ad inventory, and the relationships with advertisers.”

Mike also gives us his take on the size and potential of the overall mobile search market. It’s “basically zero” now. “Over the next 5 to 15 years, it will be a $15 billion to $20 billion market.” Interesting estimate – but Chetan Sharma has gathered more insightful stats. Today, he estimates, desktop search outpaces mobile search by a ratio of 3:1. But the revenue potential of the mobile search market in the U.S. alone is set to reach a staggering $2.5 billion in 2010, up from just $100 million in 2007. And these estimates don’t include enterprise mobile search.

BTW: Tellme recently took the wraps off a suite of voice-activated search services and there’s more detail on them here. We also get a better idea of Microsoft’s next move in voice-activated mobile search from this leak in Boy Genius Report. Finally, a detailed report on Microsoft’s campaign to corner search in this week’s BusinessWeek.

• Posted in
• Multimodal Search, Mobile Search, Mobile Advertising

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