August 17, 2010 by Andy Russell
Google’s Android phones now have a new voice action facility, which the search engine giants anticipate will boost sales and increase the popularity of their product. The voice action feature enables people to perform a series of tasks on smartphones without having to press any keys to initiate the commands.
Over the second quarter of this year, Google’s Android operating system was the fastest selling smartphone system in the United States. Currently, Google are activating over two hundred thousand Android devices daily. The new voice action service will no doubt maintain Google’s lead in the industry.
Product Manager for Google, Hugo Barra stated: “Before it was easy to search the web using voice but people do a lot more than just search the web. Now you can voice up text messages, e-mail a reminder to yourself, set your alarm clock, get directions, find music, open a map and call places. It really is about interacting with the device in the simplest of ways using the voice.”
“This represents the most significant progress Google has made in speech recognition ever since we launched voice search about two years ago. One in four searches done on Android is done using voice search.”
A spokesperson from the news blog Search Engine Land commented: “These improvements underline how seriously Google is taking its mobile strategy’. One of the amazing stories in all of this is that Android does feel like it has come out of nowhere. Since the beginning of this year there has been an explosion of Android-operated devices. People really thought it was going to be all about the iPhone but now it really does seem to be this two-player match.”
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