Months ago, Mark Shuttleworth announced and explained Ubuntu's converged vision, where a singular OS is to power phones, tablets, desktops, TVs, etc.
Presently, the Ubuntu developers are working on strengthening Ubuntu for phones (Ubuntu Touch), development where speech recognition is to probably play a relevant role.
Among the usage-cases, the speech recognition was demoed (at a mockup level) as part of the HUD 2.0, basically, allowing the user to trigger commands by pressing a button and speaking into the phone's microphone, oral command translated and applied similarly to a regular command.
Great news of today is that PocketSphinx has just landed in Ubuntu 13.10 by default being shifted from its previous universe availability (via Ubuntu Software Center) directly into main (landing via the regular updates). This means PocketSphinx is to be utilized for the upcoming Unity 8's release on the desktop, probably to allow users to fully grasp the Unity 8's features via a full spectrum of functionalities.
It's definitely just a beginning of the work but it's really great to see CMUSphinx on its way to the desktop. Definitely there will be many problems on the way since a proper implementation of the speech recognition system is not a trivial task and needs certain expertise. Your help is needed here otherwise all the issues will be assigned to Pocketsphinx.