Yitu Technology, a startup engaged in artificial intelligence and facial recognition technologies, announced on Tuesday it is exploring the speech recognition sector, planning to apply related technologies to traditional medical diagnosis to compete with market leader iFlytek Co Ltd.

The Shanghai-based company has unveiled a Mandarin speech recognition system as a tool to augment and expand the landscape for multiple business sectors.

"Speech recognition technology has evolved over the past few years, but so far it has only worked well in limited scenarios. We believe breakthrough in core technologies is the key to promoting the development of speech recognition," said Lu Hao, chief innovation officer at Yitu.

Lu said speech recognition technology has been hindered not only by the high costs involved, huge data requirements and lack of researchers, but also by the complexity of real-life applications. He added the company will continue to invest in speech recognition to push forward technological advancement.

Yitu said it will further strengthen cooperation with Microsoft Azure－United States tech giant Microsoft Corp's cloud business－to jointly launch an open platform that provides voice recognition technologies to third-party application developers.

The startup is also joining hands with smartphone manufacturer Huawei Technologies Co Ltd to release intelligent voice solutions.

Speech recognition technology is widely regarded as an opportunity that global AI companies cannot afford to miss.

IFlytek Co Ltd has used its expertise in speech technology to assist doctors to improve the accuracy of diagnoses by launching an intelligent robot. The robot not only provides basic medical consultation services for patients, but also records their symptoms, analyzes CT scans and makes diagnoses.

Liu Jiehao, an analyst from iiMedia Research, said the biggest advantage of AI lies in its highly efficient calculation, and precise analysis and decision-making, which could greatly improve working efficiency, unleash productivity as well as ease the shortage of medical resources and high costs in the healthcare industry.

China has placed great emphasis on tech development, with AI a key area. The government has laid out plans to become the world AI leader by 2030, with the aim of making the industry worth 1 trillion yuan ($145 billion).

SenseTime Group Ltd also focuses on innovative computer vision and deep learning technologies, while Megvii Technology Inc provides facial recognition technology to Alipay's "Smile to Pay" function, which allows users to pay using a facial scan on their smartphones.