The invention is applicable to the field of mobile terminal control, and provides a method and a device for starting an application program in a stand-by state. The method comprises the following steps: receiving a voice signal; resolving the voice signal, and locally finding an application program corresponding to the voice signal; and starting up the application program. In the technical scheme of the invention, a mobile terminal receives and resolves the voice signal sent by a user, and starts the application program after finding the corresponding application program through automatch; the whole process is simple to implement, and the user only needs to send the voice signal corresponding to the application program to be started up, and at that time the mobile terminal automatically starts up the application program; and according to the technical scheme of the invention, a novel application program startup way is provided for the user, the life of people is facilitated, and mobile terminal operation pleasure is increased.