User acceptance towards a personalised hands-free messaging application (iSay-SMS)

Mobile phone usage in Malaysia is spreading rapidly and has gone through great changes due to new developments and innovations in mobile phone technology. There is no doubt that more and more Malaysians are using short message service (SMS) instead of making voice calls. In order to satisfy the needs and demands of users, mobile phone manufacturers are constantly adapting and innovating to ensure that they can survive in this competitive market. An important innovation in SMS technology lately is the speech recognition technology that can convert voice messages into text messages. In other words, messages can be voice/speech typed. Currently, voice messages can only be converted into text messages in the form of normal/standard text using fully spelled words. This paper attempts to evaluate the level of acceptance of a software application which uses either standard or abbreviation text messaging dictionary for voice messaging. The product is known as iSay-SMS, a hands-free voice messaging application that enables users to send messages without the need of using keypad to type messages in the form of original fully spelled word or abbreviations or shortened form of a word. Among various technology acceptance models studied, MOPTAM was chosen as the basis of the survey. The result of the survey concluded that iSay-SMS would be accepted by the majority of mobile phone users because of its ease of use.