Mon, Mar 13, 2000 page18

• Just Talk

  Speech-recognition software for the Chinese language is often touted as having a bright future, but there are actually very few companies out there that are in the business. Taiwan's leading player in dictation programs is Applied Speech Technologies, a two-year-old company

  • By Anthony Lawrance / STAFF REPORTER
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  By the standards of high-tech start-ups, Applied Speech Technologies (AST, 聲碩科技) has a lot going for it. For one thing, it has a surly old retired soldier guarding the lobby of the building in which its sixth-floor office is located. It has new, but poorly laid carpets in its reception area, which is missing a receptionist. And it has boxes strewn around a corner of the office next to a computer with a sign hanging on it that says "e-mail server." Just a few steps on from the proverbial back of a garage, in other words.

  It also has the buzz that you'd expect from a high-tech start-up. The only employee in the office that wears a tie is the boss, who I suspect has put it on only because I'm here to interview him. There's not much noise, because everyone is glued to their screens. Geeks to the last one of them, though far better looking than Bill Gates was at their age.

  And then there's the chairman, David Young (楊大衛), who looks like he's fresh out of college (though actually, as I'm about to learn, he is relatively over the hill at 34).

  

  David Young, the 34-year-old chairman of Applied Speech Technologies, wants his company to become a major speech technology player in Asia.

  PHOTO: CHEN CHENG-CHANG, TAIPEI TIMES

  "Do you want to see our products?" he asks, after the initial cordialities are over. It's clear that this is a man who is not yet a devotee of Internet-speak, so we forget about "paradigm shifts" and what not and instead move over to a computer where Young dons a headset and picks up a book. Let the product speak for itself, I laugh silently at the irony.

  My expectations are pleasantly met. As Young talks into the headset, Chinese characters jump across the screen at barely a split-second interval. Top-quality speech-recognition software, it becomes clear.

  Young is "talking" in Microsoft Word, but quickly switches to an e-mail program to demonstrate that his software is multi-platform and multi-application in nature. You can use it on anything, basically.

  But it's only when he shows me how the program works in an Internet environment that I get truly excited. It's a gift from heaven for Chinese-language Web portals offering chat-room services.

  As anyone who has watched the rise of America Online would know, chat rooms and message boards were the foundation of its remarkable growth in subscribers over the years. They're also one of the biggest reasons why AOL bought out ICQ, the instant-messaging service, for US$243 million even though it had not generated a cent of revenue.

  But the Chinese-language community has been slower to catch on to chat services, and a big reason for this has been that it takes so much longer, and requires so much more effort (five keystrokes sometimes) to type in Chinese. But what if you could speak a sentence, hit a key and see it pop up on a chat room screen? Much more appealing, no?

  Yes, says Young, beaming.

  It gets better. The Internet is abuzz with talk about the next stage of its revolution, whereby hand-held access devices become all the rage. Mobile phone makers such as Nokia and Motorola are leaping into the fray, and just about every computer maker is talking about Internet Appliances (IAs).

  There is an easy logic to their excitement. IAs are obviously going to be dependent on, or at least hugely complemented by, speech-recognition technology. For instance, nobody wants to spend five minutes tapping on their cellphone keypads to search through a directory listing. They want the phone to do that for them, through voice commands, and present the options on their tiny screen for confirmation.

  So far, this has been fairly easy to achieve for English-language software companies. But not so for Chinese, because of the need for tonal differentiation and that fact that many Chinese characters have the same pronunciation.

  This is exactly what Young and a few classmates from National Taiwan University saw as long as a decade ago when they were looking for ways to make their mark in the technology universe. Young went off to the University of Southern California to get a master's degree. When he came back at the end of 1993, he jointly founded Megatime, a provider of real-time stock quotes via the PC, with one of his NTU classmates. But then in 1998, he spun off AST to pursue what had always been his first passion: speech-recognition technology.

  Of course, he was hardly going off on his lonesome. Besides support from Megatime and his alma mater, NTU, in research and development, the new company pulled in cash from a venture capital firm, De Heh, which took a 35 percent stake. Combined with 25 percent held by Megatime, enough shares were left to go around for AST's 40 employees -- as is the requirement of a high-tech start-up these days.

  Another such requirement these days seems to be a lack of revenues. Yet while AST's are small, they are growing quickly, from NT$11 million in the first year to NT$25 million last year, with NT$50 million projected for this year.

  "I think a doubling of revenues every year is only natural to expect," Young says casually.

  So where are the sales coming from? Well, this wouldn't be a Taiwanese company if bundling weren't a part of its strategy. US computer giant Compaq and Taiwanese company Leo are AST's two biggest partners. It also co-operates with Microsoft.

  On the retail side, AST is Taiwan's leader in dictation software with more than half of the market, well ahead of its closest competitor, IBM.

  The real potential, it goes without saying, lies across the Taiwan Strait. Though he is quick to point out that the Taiwan market is still "a baby," it is at the mention of China that Young really becomes excited.

  "We opened an office in Beijing last year," he says. "Obviously, that is the big prize."

  The product, again, is the thing.

  "Speech recognition will boom; the hardest part is keeping pace with the demand coming from the Internet," Young says.

  Too true. Internet history is littered with the remains of small companies that were launched with great technology but little experienced business management, and it's clear that Young needs as much help as he can get.

  "I expect that our staff will nearly double over the next year," he says, admitting that it will be a real challenge to find the necessary talent due to the craze for joining more flashy business-to-consumer companies. Managers and research engineers are in short supply.

  Still, AST does have a bright future. Though there are technological difficulties still to overcome, such as cutting down on signal-noise ratios (ie, recognizing a voice in a crowded room), the potential of the market is huge and Young is not short of ambition.

  "We want to become a major speech technology player in Asia," he says.

  One way to do this, he recognizes, is through strategic alliances with manufacturers of a wide range of devices. Already, the company provides software for Leo's palm computers, as Young shows me with a quick demo. Mobile phones are obviously next.

  "We need to keep our technological edge," says Young. "Voice portals and Internet services are the way to go, without a doubt."

  So he does have some Internet vocabulary after all. Perhaps 34 is not too old to run an e-company.

  David Young may be reached via e-mail at davidyou@speech.com.tw
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