Tablets Need Handwriting and Voice Recognition, Not Just Multitouch

(MoneyWatch)  While reading a profile of Turing Prize winner Charles Thacker, I came across the statistic that handwriting recognition on tablets is up to 92 percent accuracy. That reminded me of how well tablets take to types of input that seem like afterthughts in personal computers. Given the ways people use tablets, we can expect a trio of interface technologies -- touch, voice, and handwriting recognition -- to become must-haves on popular devices. Just look at where Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG), and Apple (AAPL) have beefed up their expertise.

Tablets will thrive because they are lighter and more convenient than laptops, yet with more screen real estate than smartphones. They represent what you might call serious casual computing: You can flop on a couch or prop yourself in an uncomfortable airport lounge chair, break out a tablet, and get real work or play done. But convenience and power come at a design price. You can't assume that people will be able to set up a workspace and keyboard, so you need different solutions.

Fold-in keyboards would turn a tablet into nothing more than a laptop with a touch-sensitive screen. And yet huge numbers of users will need text. Handwriting recognition trades the weight and size of a keyboard for a stylus or finger tip. Voice recognition lets you dictate emails though a wireless headset, record a talk for a cloud service to generate a rough transcription, or turn a verbal note to yourself into a text entry on a to-do list. And as Apple has shown, a good touch interface is heaven sent when you can't drag a mouse and hate touch pads.

Google, Apple, and Microsoft all have experience in each of the input technologies, though each has a particular strength. Apple has proven its forte in visual interface design over decades. Microsoft has been a major force in handwriting recognition at least since the early 1990s. Google has shown its prowess in voice recognition, particularly in creating transcripts off video recordings in YouTube. But each has been exercising its chops in weak areas in recent years. Here are some examples:

• In 2008, Apple looked for handwriting recognition engineering talent for Mac OS and iPhone OS.
• Microsoft announced plans for a voice recognition application on the iPhone and its Courier tablet will have handwriting recognition.
• Google plans handwriting recognition in Android and has just added gesture search to the OS.

So I think expectations of what tablets will be like are probably off-base and based too heavily on the iPhone experience. Tablet OS vendors will either incorporate a diverse mix of input options or have to depend on third parties to do it for them. But depending on third parties to offer what would seem a natural native feature is likely going to be a limited strategy.

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