Many of us don’t use our mobile phones very much for their voice features anymore. We text and surf the web and use phone-based IM services far more often than we actually place voice calls. However, the mobile phone industry has made a recent switch back to a focus on voice-dominant services. Three different recent announcements from Google, Alcatel-Lucent and Skype emphasize the possibilities for new voice services. These services are not simple call-and-response voice services but instead offer advanced features that combine voice with text and other messaging systems to accommodate the needs of today’s mobile phone user. The launch of these new services marks a transition from the separation of voice and text features to their true merging on today’s mobile phones.

Three Leaders in New Voice Services

There are three key companies that are paving the way for new voice-based mobile phone services. The first company is Google which recently announced the launch of Google Voice, a voice-based service that uses speech-to-text technology and Google’s organizational tools to create a text-based archive system for all calls and messages. In response to this service, Altcatel-Lucent has come out with its own announcement about the company’s new Rich Communications Manager, a similar service that offers more room for individual provider development than is available with Google Voice. And finally, Skype’s recent partnership with the iPhone means that this company too is bringing voice-based mobile phone services back to the forefront of consumers’ attention.

Google Voice (the new GrandCentral)

Google Voice is an updated service to GrandCentral, a start-up company acquired by Google a few years back. Google has finally added additional services to the original company and launched a new version for existing GrandCentral users with plans to open up the new Google Voice to the general public in the very near future. The original goal of GrandCentral was to create a system where an individual could use a single phone number that would ring at all phones (personal and work mobile phones and landlines, etc.). Google Voice maintains this original goal while adding increased functionality relating to Google’s experience with search and organizational tools.

One of the key features of interest with Google Voice is that the service uses speech-to-text technology to turn all voice calls and messages into text-based transcripts. These transcripts can then be archived online in much the same manner that you would archive your Gmail email messages. The system is set up so that the user can then search through these archives to retrieve information from previous conversations or messages, a tool that could be useful in many areas of life from social relationships to the legal issues that arise when doing business.

Alcatel-Lucent’s Rich Communications Manager

Google Voice received a lot of industry attention when the launch was first announced a couple of weeks ago and that attention has spawned an immediate response within the industry. One major response has been Alcatel-Lucent’s announcement about a web-based platform called the Rich Communications Manager which serves some of the same functions as Google Voice in terms of the storage and organization of information connecting the PC platform and the mobile phone.

Like with Google Voice, the Rich Communications Manager is also capable of turning voice into text and archiving those messages in a web-based system. The goal here is to serve as a unified communications tool where various types of media including photos and text messages can all be archived in one place. Those promoting the service say that the key difference that makes this service a better choice than Google Voice is the ability of individual phone providers to use the information that they already have about their customers to improve the customer’s experience; competition between the different providers can then improve the quality of the service overall.

Skype for iPhone

Another major announcement that follows on the heels of the Google Voice launch is the announcement from Skype about a new iPhone application that brings the VoIP service to the iPhone or iPod Touch device. The Skype client for the iPhone is similar to that for other partnerships that Skype has with handset-makers (notably with the new Nokia phones) with the exception of a couple of differences due to the specific design of the iPhone. A key difference is the ability to combine the iPhone’s camera features with photo features on Skype to create Skype avatars, something fun but not necessarily particularly functional. The point here is that the growth of mobile VoIP indicates an industry interest in voice-based services on new phones.

Summary of New Voice Services

It will be interesting to see how Google Voice and Altacel-Lucent’s Rich Communications Manager develop in the next year or so. It is possible that they are in direct competition to the point that one would outshine the other but of course it is also possible that both can serve their niche in the mobile phone industry. Some people may take a greater interest in the ability of Google Voice to allow them to have a single phone number for all calls whereas other users may find that the individual options offered by different phone providers for the Rich Communications Manager makes that the more appealing service of the two.

The movement of Skype to the mobile phone platform isn’t in any direct competition with either of the other services but instead shows that the mobile phone industry and the consumers of that industry are highly interested in voice services as well as the advanced communications services that are now available on smartphones. Mobile phones were once used primarily for voice calls. We then saw a transition in which mobile phones became used primarily for text-based messaging. What we are seeing now is a new transition which combines the benefits of both voice and text while linking the PC and mobile experience into a unified communications experience for all users.