iFlytek gives voice to new products
iFlytek, the Shenzhen-listed information technology company known for its voice recognition software, debuted a new operating system and several products in Shanghai on Tuesday.
The new products include a recorder, translator and speaker which feature voice recognition and smart translation supporting several dozen languages and dialects, iFlytek said.
“It’s time now to cash in and promote commercial use through AI technologies and tech-savvy products,” Liu Qingfeng, the company's chairman, said.
The consumer-oriented products are designed for education, health care and government-related applications.
The highlight is a smart recorder and translator, which supports voice search, speech-to-text and supports multiple languages. The device, which has a touch screen and cloud storage, costs from 1,999 yuan (US$280). With online support, it can deal with the languages of 200 countries and regions, including those of the Belt and Road regions.
iFlytek, which currently has over 140 million daily active users, also released a new operating system called iFlyOS to connect the devices.
The company, with a market value today of 66 billion yuan (US$10 billion), is one of the four national AI development platforms in China, along with Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent.
In 2017, China issued a plan on new generation AI where the industry should be a major new growth engine and have improved people's lives by 2020. The government later named the four companies to promote the project.