Handwriting recognition has, traditionally, not been high on handset makers radar, but that could be changing, according to Stefan Knerr, CEO of Vision Objects, whom we met just now on the companys stand at the Smartphone show.
The company, and its handwriting-recognition engine, MyScript, are 10 years old. VisonObjects claims that MyScript has enjoyed success because of its accuracy and its near-global language coverage. It not only understands the words that make up the language, the company says, but also, how sentences are constructed; in effect, the context in which the words are used.
MyScript has been deployed across multiple platforms, including Tablet PCs and digital pens, and is about to get its first outing on a Smartphone, though as the official announcement is a few weeks away, the company could say little other than that the deal is with a major handset maker.
According to Knerr, the company has been looking at mobile ever since it launched, which we suggested might cause a cynic to think its taken them rather a long time to seal this first deal. But Knerr says there are good reasons why its taken so long. He says:
The market is driven by big companies that build phones in the usual way. They have their specifications, and this is what they want, and we have not necessarily been part of that, because MyScript is a high quality, high value product, so we have a tendency to be a little more expensive.
We put it to Knerr that the deal is perhaps a sign that attitudes are changing. Earlier this year, another French software company, Abaxia, shared a stage with Orange, as the network operator gushed about the great work the company had done on handset personalisation for Oranges Signature series phones. 
Knerr says this is exactly what is happening, pointing out that Abaxia and VisionObjects, in fact, share an investor, the French firm Xange. 
With the advent of more sophisticated phones, capable of storing more and more applications, and reaching out to the Internet, the handset makers are finally showing more interest in improving the mobile user interface, he says. The User Interface is increasingly important and companies are realising that a coherent interface can do a lot to help the user deal with the complexity of the handset. So we are coming back to the mobile space now because we believe that people are probably ready to spend a little bit more money on it.