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June 20, 2010
Phone Software Takes the Taps Out of Typing
By JENNA WORTHAM
SEATTLE — Back in the 1990s, typing out “hello” on most 
cellphones required an exhausting 13 taps on the number keys, 
like so: 44-33-555-555-666..

That was before the inventor Cliff Kushler, based here in 
Seattle, and a partner created software called T9, which could 
bring that number down to three by guessing the word being typed.

Now there is a new challenge to typing on phones.  More phones 
are using virtual keyboards on a touch screen, replacing physical 
buttons.  But pecking out a message on a small piece of glass is 
not so easy, and typos are common..

Mr.  Kushler thinks he has a solution once again.  His new 
technology, which he developed with a fellow research scientist, 
Randy Marsden, is called Swype, and it allows users to glide a 
finger across the virtual keyboard to spell words, rather than 
tapping out each letter.  [Watch a demonstration of Swype on 
YouTube.com]

While many smartphones have features that auto-complete words, 
correct typos on the fly and add punctuation, Mr.  Kushler is 
aiming for the next level.

“We’ve squeezed the desktop computer, complete with keyboard and 
mouse, into something that fits in a pocket.  The information 
bandwidth has become very constricted,” he said.  “I thought, if 
we can find a better way to input that information, it could be 
something that would really take off.”

Mr.  Kushler says Swype is a big breakthrough that could reach 
billions of people.  That’s not as ambitious as it sounds.  To 
date, the T9 technology has been built into more than four 
billion devices worldwide.  In 1999 its creators sold it to AOL 
for a reported $350 million; it is now owned by the 
speech-recognition company Nuance.

Swype’s software detects where a finger pauses and changes 
direction as it traces out the pattern of a word.  The movements 
do not have to be precise because the software calculates which 
words a user is most likely trying to spell.

Capitalization and double letters can be indicated with a pause 
or squiggle, while spacing and punctuation are automatic.  Mr.  
Kushler, who is chief technology officer of Swype, estimates that 
the software can improve even the nimblest text-messager’s pace 
by 20 to 30 percent.

Swype is now being used on seven smartphones in the United 
States, across all major wireless carriers, including the HTC HD2 
and the Samsung Omnia II.  By the end of the year, the company 
says its software will be on more than 50 models worldwide.

It does not have a deal with Apple, the king of touch-screen 
phones, but it is tinkering with software for the iPhone and the 
iPad and hopes to show it to Apple soon.

To make money, Swype charges phone makers a licensing fee for 
each device sold.  It also sees opportunity in add-ons.

“We could have custom dictionaries for doctors or lawyers,” said 
Mike McSherry, chief executive of the company.

But Swype’s appeal goes beyond mobile phones, said Won Park, 
director of United States technology sourcing at Samsung.

“It could become the de facto standard for tablets, 
next-generation TVs or next-generation remote controls,” Mr.  
Park said.  “It has tremendous potential.”

Swype’s executives also see its reach extending into public 
kiosks, smart home appliances, video game consoles and in-car 
navigation systems.

Some older input methods for mobile devices were based on 
scribbled gestures, like Palm’s Graffiti.  But using Graffiti was 
slower than typing and forced people to learn an entirely new 
handwriting format to produce accurate results, said Gavin Lew, 
co-founder of User Centric, a consulting firm that studies user 
experiences with mobile devices.

“Swype-like applications rely on a well-known layout, the full 
qwerty keyboard,” he said.  “One simply needs to target a 
specific letter rather than relying on a memory of how to draw a 
letter.”

As cellphones take on the functions of personal computers, Mr.  
Lew said, the need increases to quickly enter and search for 
information on them.

“These devices aren’t just phones anymore, which is why you’re 
seeing all these new technologies emerge,” he said.  “The more we 
use them in our daily lives, the greater the need to be more 
efficient at inputting information.”

Mr.  Kushler began experimenting with input methods in 2001, 
guided in part by his earlier work in helping people with 
disabilities use technology.  He took note of the popularity of 
devices like those from Palm that used a stylus for input, but he 
saw room for improvement.  He worked with Mr.  Marsden to 
fine-tune the Swype software — which took a laborious seven 
years.

“The most important thing was that it could accurately figure out 
which word you wanted to spell,” Mr.  Kushler said.  “It needed 
to work no matter what.”

Swype is not the only start-up hoping to profit from innovations 
in this area.  Many companies are trying to improve the way 
people type on touch screens, which are proliferating swiftly.  
The research firm Gartner expects global sales of touch-screen 
devices to reach 326.7 million in 2010, an increase of 97 percent 
from last year.

SlideIT, a start-up with offices in the United States and Israel, 
sells applications for touch-screen text input with a finger or 
stylus for Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android phones.  The 
company says that since February its software has been downloaded 
more than 500,000 times.

Nuance, a company best known for speech recognition software, 
acquired a start-up called ShapeWriter that matches patterns 
traced onto a touch-screen keyboard with those of commonly 
written words.  It is negotiating with phone makers to use its 
software, called T9 Trace.

Google is trying to let people skip the screen entirely by 
developing voice- and image-recognition technologies.  Its 
Goggles application can analyze a photo of some text and 
translate it into a different language — no typing required.

Meanwhile, Swype is moving ahead with its own voice recognition 
feature, which it expects to add to smartphones this summer.

“We’re all about improving how people input information into 
their phones, whether through swiping or speaking,” Mr.  McSherry 
said.


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