A history of dedicated voice technology devices, part 4

In 1997, Apple had just lost a billion dollars and was on the verge of bankruptcy.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates stood up together in front of the crowd at Macworld Expo in August 1997 and announced that Microsoft Office would now run on Mac’s. Apple and Microsoft would no longer be thought of as us or them.
With a $150 million dollar injection from Microsoft and a new board of directors which included the CEO’s of Oracle and Intuit, Steve Jobs announced to the world that Apple would need to think different in order to survive. Think different about products, user experience and in collaboration.
So for an annual salary of only $1 a year, Steve Jobs set the world on a new path that lead to collaborative innovation that broke across technology barriers everywhere.
Voice technology for productivity also did a paradigm shift in collaborative innovation.
2000 |
The first smart phone appears (Ericsson R30) The first electric car |
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YouTube founded It would quickly become the most watched TV channel with more viewers than every other TV channel in the world combined |
2005 |
2007 |
The Digital Pocket Memo 9600 series was key to bringing digital voice dictation into corporate enterprise networks around the world. |
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Mobile tablets invented
Philips Dictation recorder app released further pushing new boundaries in converged connectivity |
2010 |
2012 |
SpeechMike Premium world’s first motion sensor in a stationary digital dictation device | ![]() |
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Digital Pocket Memo 8000 series offers 256bit AES encryption and pin lock technology |
2013 |
Steve Jobs died in 2011 after a battle with cancer but his beliefs lived on with many industry giants like Philips Electronics forged new ideas and innovations while respecting his accomplishments.
Visionaries like Steve Jobs made it okay for us to exist in a world where we are quite literally all connected.
We are free to soar into the clouds and see where our imagination takes us.
What can history teach us about the future? Find out in the final post here
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