The growing popularity of mobile devices is certainly not lost. The sheer growth of smartphones, tablets, and the associated software for the same – be it app or otherwise – has been too pronounced for too long to go easily unnoticed.

The rise of speech recognition systems is also mounting; though perhaps not as fast as that of mobile devices, it's hard to escape as exemplified by just one word: Siri. Bringing the two together, however, is posing some very exciting new developments as the field of mobile speech recognition starts coming into its own.

While Siri is pretty much top dog in terms of mobile speech recognition, the old girl has plenty of competitors making their play for a chunk of her market. For example, back in August, Nuance Communications (News - Alert) – the same people behind the popular Dragon Naturally Speaking speech-to-text software – brought out two pieces that made it clear that it wanted a piece of the pie. First was Nina, essentially the Android (News - Alert) version of Siri, that allowed for a virtual assistant with speech characteristics, who also offered up an open software developer kit (SDK) that allowed other developers to bring in speech capabilities to their own mobile apps.

This was followed by the Dragon Mobile SDK, which allowed for voice-enable on other apps as well. So far, over 13,000 developers have taken Nuance up on its offer, and that's undoubtedly opening a few floodgates of its own.

But it's not just Siri and Nina duking it out in a grand software catfight; Intel (News - Alert) has also thrown in its own spin with the Perceptual Computing SDK 2013 Beta released back in October. Even Microsoft is getting in the game, as Kinect brings voice control to gaming and Windows Phone (News - Alert) does likewise for mobile.

So with multiple SDKs on hand, some might ask, what's stopping voice from being the next big thing? Why don't we see more people talking to their phones for everything or talking to their tablets?

One of the biggest problems getting in the way is a matter of sheer complexity. While SDKs may offer certain commands, getting outside of those commands is a tall order. But as more of them are mastered, the chance of more voice-controlled material comes into play. An increasing number of competitors in the overall market space certainly doesn't hurt; the more competition there is, the more each has to offer to stand out. As each offering brings out progressively more, the end result means an overall more robust system available for users.

Needless to say, there is a lot of potential out there for mobile speech recognition. The more companies get into it, the more robust and efficient the offerings in the field will be. With the mobile field in general on a rapid upward tick – from mobile shopping to mobile hardware itself and most everything else in between – the benefits to getting into the field will likely prove too rich a prize for most companies to pass up.

The end result means those who want to talk to their phones, without talking to someone else on the other end, are about to be able to get much more done.

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