Predicting how we text is smart phone business

Ralph Miller
28 Oct 2010

With more than 11 million text messages sent every hour in the UK, texting is a vital part of the way in which we communicate. Today we are able to do almost anything from our mobile phones, but as they get smaller and ever more complex, even with the aid of predictive text, typing a simple message into a tiny keyboard can become an error-prone, drawn-out chore.

However, entrepreneur Jon Reynolds believes he has come up with software that will revolutionise predictions and make time-consuming texting a thing of the past. The software understands the way in which people construct sentences and gives highly accurate predictions based on their context to help speed-up typing.

The technology has already interested many in the smartphone industry and his company TouchType has raised more than £1 million through funding awards and investment.

It recently released SwiftKey, an app for Android-operated phones, and will have its software embedded into a number of phone models due for release in time for Christmas.

Reynolds, a natural sciences graduate, decided he wanted to do something after becoming frustrated by unwieldy keyboards on smartphones. His moment of inspiration came in a meeting in his previous job as a civil servant. “I remember watching some lawyers replying to emails on their BlackBerrys and I saw them, with fingers too fat for the keys, trying to type and it looked dreadful,” he says.

Reynolds, 24, came up with the idea for a potential solution, but without the technical know-how to realise his ideas, he approached a friend Ben Medlock, an IT consultant, whom he knew from Cambridge University. Medlock, who studied computational linguistics, liked the idea and began work on making the idea a reality.

Their programme is different to other predictive typing software because it calculates what you are likely to type next, based on what you have already written. “At the moment text prediction has a bad reputation because it often predicts stupid words,” says Reynolds.

Using complex language analysis, the software will work out the three most commonly used words in the context of the sentence, meaning less typing is required to write whole sentences. The company claims that 85% of words can be predicted within typing two or fewer characters.

The software also learns your writing style. “It doesn't just learn new vocabulary specific to you, like friends' names. It tries to make sure it's a personalised and relevant experience to you. The way you text your mates might be different to how you email your boss and we are building that into the keyboard as well.”

The SwiftKey app retails in the Android market at £2.48 and, despite being one of the more expensive apps, Reynolds believes it represents good value. The app has already been downloaded 55,000 times. “If you compare it to an Oyster card journey or a pint, you get something you will use 100 times a day and you have it forever.”

TouchType is also looking at expanding onto operating systems other than Android, but users of the iPhone or the new Windows Phone 7 are unable to use the technology, as their manufacturers do not allow developers to modify their keyboards.

Reynolds says he has had a mixed experience in setting up the business. Unlikely to secure a loan from the banks, TouchType obtained finance from government-funded research bodies instead. “We had a great idea, but we didn't have the money to build the prototype. By getting the grant from the Government we were able to get our feet off the ground.”

Reynolds fears, however, that government cost-cutting measures could stifle entrepreneurship in the future. “The regional development agencies, for example, are a cheap thing to cut, but the cost is potentially a lot of entrepreneurs' ideas.”

Reynolds adds that paperwork and red tape have added to the challenge of launching a company. It has also been a juggling act to keep up with friends, make time for his girlfriend, and still help out at a football team for kids near his home in Vauxhall.

The future looks good if Reynolds is right that TouchType could be worth tens of millions of pounds in the future. The tablet market is a major opportunity as the technology could help people with learning difficulties to type more accurately, says Reynolds, who hopes to become a social entrepreneur one day, using his skills to benefit society.

Before that, however, he has much work to do with TouchType, although he is already thinking about his next business idea. He will only say:
“It could have a similar impact to the way in which Amazon revolutionised shopping.”

Evidently Reynolds is in the business of bold predictions.