S. Korea companies flock to develop voice recognition technology

S. Korea companies flock to develop voice recognition technology

Hwang Ji-hye, Sohn Yu-ri

2014.01.17 17:13:29

A new way is emerging to facilitate natural communication between humans and machines. People use ‘words,’ rather than keyboard or mouse, to operate machines via a speech recognition technology.
South Korean companies are working on developing independent speech recognition technologies. LG Electronics is the only Korean smartphone producer that owns an independently developed speech recognition technology, and is applying it to a wider range of products covering smartphones, air conditioners, smart TVs, and robotic vacuum cleaners. The “Q Voice,” a default app installed in LG Electronics’ smartphones, uses Google’s voice recognition technology and LG’s own proprietary natural language engine “Wernicke” that analyzes input sentences. “Wernicke is far better at recognizing the Korean than Google or Apple’s technologies,” said an official at LG Electronics’ future IT fusion research institute, which develops and researches the Wernicke. Unlike Google’s voice search or Apple’s “Siri,” the Q Voice understands both simple questions like “confirm Seoul weather now” and conversation-like sentences like “tell me how to get from Yeouido to Gwanghwamun.”
A team at Samsung Electronics is reportedly independently developing a Korean recognition technology to be used for the company’s smartphones or smart TVs. Samsung Electronics’ voice recognition app “S Voice” adopted the US technology “Vlingo.”

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Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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