Operating under the auspices of the parent company that acquired it in March 2007, Tellme Networks has spearheaded Microsoft’s bid to make a place for itself in speech. The vendor is also at the center of Microsoft’s effort to become a player in the emerging mobile search market. At the start of 2009, Microsoft commanded only a slim 5 percent of the mobile market share, according to AccuraCast—nearly the same share it held the year before. This is only one-12th of what Google holds and one-third of Yahoo’s slice.

Many search players, in fact, have seen the mobile space as an area in which Google might be overtaken, or at least significantly challenged. When it comes to Tellme’s voice search offering, analysts and consultants ranked it well in multimodal integration and accuracy. “Their interface does a good job displaying the search results,” says one analyst. Looking forward, Tellme could emerge as a major force in voice search. Microsoft seems to be taking its investment in acquiring the company seriously, integrating Tellme’s search functionalities into the Windows Mobile 6.5 platform that is due for release in a few weeks. This could spell greater exposure and a real greenfield opportunity for Tellme and Microsoft’s voice search.