Meeting its planned mid-1998 launch deadline, General Magic Inc. began commercial rollout of its Portico virtual assistant service July 30 through a network of nationwide resellers.
Portico, formerly code-named Serengeti, is a second-generation virtual assistant that General Magic hopes will allow it to take advantage of the growing movement towards communications synchronization and integration.
The service integrates and retrieves a subscriber’s voice mail, e-mail, address book and calender as well as various information services, either via a web browser or by telephone using voice commands and responses.
A network of 52 telecom and Internet resellers specializing in wireless communications products and services now is offering the service in more than 200 locations nationwide.
“We know that making the Portico service available through resellers is the best and fastest way to reach potential subscribers through a convenient and familiar channel,” said Steve Markman, chairman and chief executive officer of General Magic.
Prior to the launch, General Magic has been training its reseller partners in the service functions and selling points.
For now, resellers will conduct their own advertising and marketing activities. Markman said General Magic wants to brand the service to create a clear connection between Portico, General Magic and its voice user interface technology magicTalk. The company will launch its own advertising campaign to raise awareness and brand image during the fourth quarter, Markman said.
The company said it chose a reseller strategy because it allows the service to reach nationwide availability from the get-go, creates more direct contact with the end user for customer service and product performance reasons and gives General Magic more control over the service’s ramp-up to avoid over-subscribing.
“General Magic is smart to offer this service nationally on day one,” said Alan Reiter, president of wireless analysis firm Wireless Internet & Mobile Computing, when the company announced the strategy in May. “It is important to have a broad strategy including resellers, value-added resellers, device manufacturers and telecommunications providers. If Portico offers many of the features I’ve seen so far, the potential end-user demand will best be addressed by multiple channels. This is an excellent move by General Magic that will increase their opportunity to gain subscribers now and in the future.”
In the future, several telecom carriers may offer Portico as a value-added service to their customers as well. BellSouth Corp. and Bell Atlantic Corp. both have conducted extensive network trials of the service to date.
“Carriers have a substantive process they go through when choosing products and services,” Markman said. “There’s a validation process first where they determine `Yeah, this works.’ … The second phase is where the marketing department gets involved.” He said these carriers now must conduct their own market trials to determine how to position Portico and create their own rate plans. Carriers will co-brand with General Magic when they roll out the service.
Markman said he hopes to see carriers offering the service to their subscribers by the end of the year or early next, and that last week’s commercial launch was an important milestone toward that effort. “They need to see us moving forth,” he said.
Portico subscribers can choose among five standard payment plans, starting at $20 for up to an hour, plus 20 cents a minute for every minute over, to about $150 for 1,300 minutes. Annual payment plans also are available. All include a one-time activation fee of $50.
Customers basically are paying for access to the Portico service bureau, reached via a toll-free 887 number and entering a password. Callers then are connected to the Portico Network Operations Center, the “brains” of the service bureau that can handle 100,000 calls at once. Once connected, users can take advantage of all the service’s features.
The same information is available via the web at the Portico Web site, after users enter their passcode, in a graphical user interface. But Portico’s sexiness stems from its voice abilities.
The proprietary magicTalk VUI allows users to speak “natural language” commands to access, retrieve and redistribute information across various computer and telephone networks via a wireless or wireline telephone.
For instance, a subscriber will ask the Portico assistant to read certain new e-mail messages, direct the assistant to forward the message from one device to another, or fax it, discard it or reply to it. Commands can vary from: “Read my mail” to “Is there any mail for me?” and “Do I have messages?”
The company partnered with social psychology and agent interface experts to develop a kind of personality for the VUI. While the assistant’s remarks are scripted, read and recorded beforehand, they are not menu driven, so the service will randomly vary its speech. For instance, it may switch between saying “yes” or “sure” to respond in the positive. The user even can select the type of virtual assistant desired: by gender, personality or both.
General Magic licensed AcuVoice Inc.’s text-to-speech synthesizer and Starfish Software Inc.’s TrueSync synchronization platform. Motorola Inc. recently purchased Starfish, a move General Magic praised as broadening the potential subscriber base for the Portico service.
The TrueSynch client/server platform will enable Portico to interact simultaneously with information on multiple devices, including PalmPilot PDAs, devices powered by Windows CE, desktop PCs and future smart-phone devices and Symbian-based machines. The network also contains mobile and intelligent agent technology.
While Portico underwent extensive testing before the launch, Markman said he believes the true test has only now begun.
“While we’ve been working with customers through external testing … this is where the rubber meets the road,” he said. “We finally get a chance to see what real usage is and what features they’re going to want going forward.”
The ultimate test of a product is seeing what people will actually pay for, he said, and the company expects some “fine tuning” of the service and features going forward.
“We’ll modify (the service) based on input from paying customers telling us what they need and what they’re willing to pay for,” he said. “We look forward to getting a lot of user feedback and getting it to just hum along … We’re finally making money.”
