Nuance, ZTE expand strategic relationship with T9 portfolio

BURLINGTON, USA: Nuance Communications announced that Nuance’s full T9 predictive input portfolio, including T9, XT9, T9 Write and T9 Trace, will be integrated into ZTE’s global mobile handset portfolio.

This new multi-year agreement marks an expansion of the two companies’ strategic global relationship announced in March 2010 to ship Nuance VSuite and Vocalizer speech technology on ZTE devices worldwide.

ZTE is among the top six mobile handset providers in the world serving more than 500 operators in over 140 countries. As a result of this expanded relationship, ZTE will significantly upgrade its text input capabilities across its mobile handset portfolio and will be the first manufacturer to integrate the innovative new T9 Trace and T9 Write products for a major global carrier.

ZTE also now has broad access to Nuance’s robust language database that enables ZTE to support up to 85 languages across its growing global footprint in both established and emerging markets.

“In order to continue successfully growing our global market share, we have to deliver our customers innovative yet sleek handsets that meet the various demands of their consumer base,” said Kan Yulun, CTO, handset division, ZTE Corp.

“Nuance helps us stay ahead by delivering smart, intuitive and easy-to-use speech and text input technologies, like T9 Trace and T9 Write – two very exciting continuous touch solutions that provide both ZTE and our mobile operator partners a great point of differentiation in the marketplace.”

With T9 Write handwriting and T9 Trace continuous touch input, ZTE is able to deliver a customizable experience that gives people more control over how they stay connected. Both offerings take full advantage of today’s touchscreen interfaces on any mobile platform, including feature phones and smartphones based on Android, creating a fast, fun and sleek user experience that complements ZTE’s innovative device lineup.

“We’re seeing strong global demand for multimodal input capabilities from our partners like ZTE to further set them apart in an increasingly competitive global marketplace,” said Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager, Nuance Mobile.

“The integration of the Nuance T9 across ZTE’s mobile device portfolio is a natural extension of our existing relationship in speech technology, and now we’re able to give ZTE the power to differentiate through innovation and customization.”

The Nuance T9 predictive input portfolio is among the mobile industry’s most widely adopted predictive text technologies that make it faster and easier to send text messages and emails, and quickly type URLs via any keypad format, including standard and touchscreen 12-key and QWERTY keypads. Nuance’s trusted speech and predictive input technology ships on more than four billion handsets worldwide.