Nuance the company that pretty well dominates the text-to-speech (TTS) and speech-to-text (STT) market is now taking over the whole device input market too. It previously acquired Tegic (who produced the T9 text input system from AOL for $265m in 2007.
T9 was developed by Cliff Kushler while at Tegic, who then left to found Swype who produce a device input system for Android phone (users swipe their finders across the touch-sensitive screen to write words), it has been installed on around 50m Android phones.
Nuance has now purchased Swype directly for $102.5m ($77.5 now and a further $22.5m after 18 months).
Nuance's STT technology is already used in Google's Android, Apple's iOS, RIM's Blackberry and allegedly in the Siri service which is used by Apple's iOS v5 (and the iPhone 4S).
Showing posts with label text-to-speech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label text-to-speech. Show all posts
2011/08/16
Nuance buys Loquendo
Nuance who are buying up everyone involved in text-to-speech (TTS) and speech-to-text (STT) have just purchased Loquendo from Telecom Italia for $75m.
Many TTS companies have evolved out of telecoms companies as they have had to had speech engines in their telecoms switches to announce to users call issues etc and even services such as the speaking clock - which in some countries are completely automatic. Efficient natural sounding computer generated speech is difficult to achieve and Loquendo have been leaders in this area in Europe (anyone using a TomTom device will be familiar with a Loquendo speech engine).
This adds to Nuance's already large portfolio of TTS products.
Nuance were also famous for purchasing Spinvox (for around £64m) the Marlow based company that converted voicemails into text messages, but were the probe of a BBC journalists investigation after it was alleged that voicemails were sent outside the EU in violation of data protection law for manual conversion by agents. Nuance shut the consumer division of Spinvox down to utilise their carrier connections.
Many TTS companies have evolved out of telecoms companies as they have had to had speech engines in their telecoms switches to announce to users call issues etc and even services such as the speaking clock - which in some countries are completely automatic. Efficient natural sounding computer generated speech is difficult to achieve and Loquendo have been leaders in this area in Europe (anyone using a TomTom device will be familiar with a Loquendo speech engine).
This adds to Nuance's already large portfolio of TTS products.
Nuance were also famous for purchasing Spinvox (for around £64m) the Marlow based company that converted voicemails into text messages, but were the probe of a BBC journalists investigation after it was alleged that voicemails were sent outside the EU in violation of data protection law for manual conversion by agents. Nuance shut the consumer division of Spinvox down to utilise their carrier connections.
2008/08/11
Euro Tech News now Speech enabled
This blog has now been speech enabled using the Talklets accessibility software-as-a-service from Textic Ltd.
Talklets comes in various flavours, the simplest being a toolbar which floats at the bottom of the browser - this involves installing 1 line of Javascript code on every web page.
There are also more complicated versions, from a simple toolbox like the one on this site, to a toolbox which contains all the Talklets features.
Talklets allows sites to meet their Disability Discrimination legislation requirements for website owners as it is the onus of the website owner to make their site compliant without the user having to install any software or tools. Talklets also has other benefits for website owners as users tend to stay around longer while listening to text being read. E-Commerce sites also see revenue increases as users go through to purchase. The are indirect savings as well as users tend to use on-line help rather than go to call centres if the help is read to them.
As the system is SaaS any enhancements made to the server side are automatically made available to the website owner and their users.
There is a free 14 day trial of the software available from Textic's site.
Talklets comes in various flavours, the simplest being a toolbar which floats at the bottom of the browser - this involves installing 1 line of Javascript code on every web page.
There are also more complicated versions, from a simple toolbox like the one on this site, to a toolbox which contains all the Talklets features.
Talklets allows sites to meet their Disability Discrimination legislation requirements for website owners as it is the onus of the website owner to make their site compliant without the user having to install any software or tools. Talklets also has other benefits for website owners as users tend to stay around longer while listening to text being read. E-Commerce sites also see revenue increases as users go through to purchase. The are indirect savings as well as users tend to use on-line help rather than go to call centres if the help is read to them.
As the system is SaaS any enhancements made to the server side are automatically made available to the website owner and their users.
There is a free 14 day trial of the software available from Textic's site.
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