Chinese firms planning to take on Apple's Siri

SIAC looking to create better speech recognition software

A group of China-based technology firms have come together to bring better Chinese speech recognition technology to electronic devices.

According to Digitimes, the Speech Industry Alliance of China (SIAC) is being formed in an attempt to improve upon Mandarin and Cantonese speech technology. The alliance would look to compete with Siri's recent addition of Chinese language support.

Tech heavyweights such as Huawei Technologies, Lenovo, and China Mobile are said to be a part of the 19 company alliance.

Many of the companies in the alliance have already released speech-recognition software, but the firms hope that by pooling resources they can create a stronger database for Mandarin and Cantonese vocal recognition.

Alliance partners, iFlytech and Huawei currently work together to bring Chinese-based speech recognition to Huawei smartphones.

iFlytech is China's number one speech recognition service, the company currently holds a 70 per cent market share in the its native China.

The coming together of the alliance looks to be a way to stay competitive in the growing mobile voice recognition technologies sector.

Siri's skills with Mandarin and Cantonese language recognition is reportedly not as strong as current market offerings. Local competitors are reported to have had more time to work out the issues that arise from chinese-based speech recognition.

Despite Siri's issues with native language voice recognition, iPhone's market sales in China are still reported to be strong.

Apple is said to be gearing up for the release of the iPhone 5 which some analysts predict could push iPhone sales in China.

A Morgan Stanley letter to investors uncovered by Forbes earlier this year claimed that iPhone sales could reach the 40 million mark by the end of this year, and 60 million per year in future.

According to reports Apple sold only 21 million combined iPhones and iPads in China during 2011, compared to the 17 million units sold in the UK for the third quarter alone.

Apple has seen its share of Siri-related issues in China. A Taiwanese university is currently suing Apple on claims that the iPhone maker infringed on speech-recognition patents the school created.