Ectaco, Inc. Sums Up Its Participation at the International CES 2002 Expo

Jan 18, 2002

The Universal Translator™ UT-103, the first multilingual phrase bank with speech recognition capability in the world, aroused great interest among the media and show visitors alike.

Ectaco, Inc., the world leader in the production of pocket electronic dictionaries, took stock of its participation at the CES 2002 expo. The company’s main achievement at the event was the wide interest in the UT-103.

In the course of the four days of the show, scores of expo guests and journalists visited the Ectaco, Inc. stand. The calibre of those interested showed that interest in the UT had reached a whole new level. In taking stock of Ectaco’s participation in CES 2002, company CEO David Lubinitsky noted, “A change in the perception of speech recognition technologies is at hand. They are becoming more popular and are moving out of the realm of science fiction. It is obvious that not only is professional interest in them is growing, but also consumer interest. At the press conference that we conducted at COMDEX in November of last year, mostly journalists from specialized publications such as Wired Magazine, Silicon 2.0, PC Magazine and Pocket PC Magazine showed up. At CES 2002, the Universal Translator™ garnered the interested of the general mass media.”

During his stay in Las Vegas, Lubinitsky gave interviews to leading newspapers - The Los Angeles Times, Detroit Free Press and number of online publications. Other media included Canadian national broadcaster CBC, the cable channel Tech TV and KCPQ-TV 13 Fox Seattle, as well as Bloomberg Radio.

In his interviews, Lubinitsky emphasized that the development of speech recognition technologies was expressly chosen as the company’s business strategy.

“We saw that interesting proposals and new technologies were appearing on the IT market,” commented he to Bloomberg Radio correspondent Fred Fishkin, “I have to say that we now are in step with world technological progress.”

Ectaco’s Vice President of Research and Development Anton Epifanov added, “The UT-103 is our first bird of spring. Recently we upgraded the device, adding two new subject categories and a language. Now the UT-103 speaks Russian. More improvements and new devices are on the way.”