Introduction of speech interface for mobile information services

Popular Japanese mobile Web-phones are widely used to connect to Internet providers (IP). The most popular service on mobile Web-phones is E-mail. Currently, users type the messages using the ten standard keys on the phone. Several letters and Kana (Japanese phonetic characters) are assigned to each key, and the user steps through them by tapping the key repeatedly. After inputting several words, the user converts them into Kanji (Chinese character). Kana-Kanji conversion is still improving, and recently fast text input methods have been introduced, but these key input methods are still troublesome. A speech interface is expected to overcome this input difficulty. However, speech interfaces suffer several problems, both technical and social. The paper summarises these problems and looks at some methods by which technical solutions may be found.