Burlington, MA and BARCELONA (Mobile World Congress 2010) – February 15, 2010 – Nuance Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUAN) today announced an enhanced version of Nuance T9 Write, the Company’s innovative handwriting technology for touch screen and pen-based devices that features multi-touch gesture and on-top writing capabilities. Nuance T9 Write blends handwriting input with Nuance XT9 predictive text technology to enhance the recognition of naturally shaped letters, numbers, symbols and punctuation in more than 40 languages — predicting words as you write them.
Driven by consumer adoption, breakthrough touch screen devices are entering the mobile ecosystem weekly, and there is a clear market demand for multi-modal input technology that allows users to choose the input method that’s best for them, whether it’s touch, handwriting, texting or speaking — particularly on pen-based touch screen devices. With Nuance T9 Write, users can quickly enter text in the most natural way by simply writing out words and symbols directly on–screen. Nuance T9 Write learns each user’s preferred vocabulary and even adds new words based on user communication patterns. Further, it supports user shortcuts including abbreviations for commonly-used phrases, email addresses and other frequently used words and phrases, and features a groundbreaking handwriting method called “on-top” writing that allows users to write each letter or symbol directly on top of each other, versus across the screen — critical for smaller user interfaces.
The latest version of Nuance T9 Write also takes handwriting recognition to the next level by enabling multi-touch gestures. With multi-touch gestures, users don’t even need a stylus — they simply use their finger to write words, symbols and numbers, and easily edit text. For instance, a single finger swipe will delete specific characters, two fingers will delete an entire word, and a full swipe of the hand will delete the entire message. Nuance T9 Write allows users to pre-set the multi-touch gestures that work best for them, creating a completely customized experience. Users can even switch between writing and traditional keyboard input with just a simple screen tap.
“The text input landscape has changed significantly over the last few years with the advent of touch screen devices, so Nuance continuously innovates to give manufacturers and their consumers the best possible user experience,” said Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager, Nuance Mobile. “With Nuance T9 Write, users get the best of both worlds – the predictive input they’ve come to rely on, coupled with the ability to write on their device and instantly see words and phrases.”
Nuance T9 Write’s advanced features are a result of a simple yet powerful integration with Nuance XT9 predictive text technology for QWERTY and touch screen keyboards. Each are based on the core Nuance T9 predictive text technology that has shipped on more than 4 billion phones to date. Nuance T9 Write also creates an amazing messaging experience for the user, as it reduces word error recognition rates by up to 80 percent and reduces text input memory consumption on the device by 50 percent over unintegrated handwriting solutions. And with support for any platform and OS, and more than 40 languages worldwide, Nuance T9 Write offers an amazing multi-modal input experience in a broad variety of markets — established and emerging.
Nuance T9 Write is a part of Nuance’s broad mobile portfolio that features the industry’s most pervasive mobile speech and predictive input solutions. Nuance’s mobile portfolio is changing the way consumers interact with their mobile phones to send text messages and email, place calls, and access the mobile Web for information, directions, music and more. For more information about Nuance T9 Write, please visit www.nuance.com/t9/t9write.asp.
About Nuance Communications, Inc.
Nuance is a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with information and how they create, share and use documents. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications and professional services. For more information, please visit: www.nuance.com.
Nuance, T9 Write, T9, XT9 and the Nuance logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States of America and/or other countries. All other company names or product names may be the trademarks of their respective owners.