Nokia supports a large community of application developers, especially for its Series 60 smartphone platform, and is in the process of buying out the Symbian OS that forms the basis of Series 60 and making it available as open source through an entity called the Symbian Foundation. That move is part of the wider trend in the mobile industry, accelerated by Apple's iPhone App Store success, of creating and tapping into large developer communities to make devices compelling.

The deal is not exclusive, and the companies didn't reveal any financial details. The primary royalty arrangement would be between Nokia and Nuance, Thompson said.

Making the voice tools available to third-party developers might lead to a flowering of new voice-enabled mobile applications, including games, said analyst Jack Gold of J. Gold Associates. But there's a danger of those third parties implementing the technology poorly, he added.

"Command and control is one thing," Gold said. "Understanding random speech patterns is very hard to do."