Thursday, November 13, 2008

Vlingo wins mobile app fast-pitch contest

By Mass High Tech Staff

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After navigating a local mobile application contest reminiscent of American Idol for cell phone applications, Cambridge-based Vlingo Inc. has been named the winner of AT&T’s Fast-Pitch New England mobile application developer competition.

The award was announced last evening, after the three finalists — Vlingo, FreeFamilyWatch.com of Braintree and Mobicious Inc. of Needham — made their 15-minute pitches to judges and event attendees.

As the cream of the crop, selected from dozens of entries from throughout New England, Vlingo will walk away with $10,000 in cash and the opportunity to be considered for wider distribution on one of AT&T’s mobile Internet portals.

Vlingo makes a voice recognition application that allows users to operate the functions of their smartphone without typing. After downloading the application, features like text messaging or local searches can be activated and navigated using voice cues.

Vlingo was founded by Mike Phillips, a co-founder of Boston-based SpeechWorks Inc. (which merged with Burlington-based Nuance Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: NUAN) in 2005 in a $221 million deal) and John Nguyen, a former vice president of engineering at mobile music platform developer Groove Mobile Inc., which was acquired by LiveWire Mobile, Inc., a subsidiary of Framingham-based NMS Communications Corp. (Nasdaq: NMSS), last spring for $14.5 million.

The company has raised $26.5 million in private funding, including a $20 million round it landed in April. Investors include Yahoo! Inc., Charles River Ventures and Sigma Partners.

While AT&T has held similar national competitions in the past, Fast-Pitch New England is the company’s first locally based mobile application contest. Past winners of the national competitions include Ascendo Fitness, My Local TV News Over Wireless and Mobile Comic Books by uclick LLC.

The contest was also sponsored by the region’s local industry groups, including the Massachusetts Network Communications Council, the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council and Mass Innovation & Technology Exchange (MITX).