Nuance Communications announced an agreement to acquire
Loquendo, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Telecom Italia. The combination of
Nuance and Loquendo’s innovations will advance the proliferation of
voice-enabled solutions.
Acquisition will accelerate the development of new
capabilities that will deliver natural, conversational interactions between
consumers and the contact center, automobiles, mobile phones, and other
consumer devices in Europe and Latin America.
Loquendo provides a range of speech technologies for
telephony, mobile, automotive, embedded and desktop solutions in 32 languages
with 76 voices.
Loquendo’s text-to-speech (TTS), automatic speech
recognition (ASR) and voice biometrics solutions empower people to interact
with technology in the most natural way possible using their voice to create a
compelling customer experience and save businesses millions of dollars each
year.
Loquendo speech solutions are deployed in more than 20
million devices worldwide, in embedded, automotive and mobile environments. Its
technologies power millions of calls every day in telecommunications and
enterprise markets worldwide.
The combined organization offers a broad, high quality
portfolio of voice and language solutions that includes TTS, ASR and voice
biometrics solutions.
In addition, the acquisition enhances language coverage
for network-based and embedded customers, and strengthens Nuance’s global channel
partnerships which drive the adoption of speech-enabled solutions worldwide.
The transaction is expected to close in late September 2011.
The penetration of Loquendo’s offerings and the
company’s positive industry recognition will serve as a catalyst in expanding
our market reach and our voice and language portfolio,” said Steve Chambers,
chief marketing officer and head of the enterprise division, Nuance
Communications.
The adoption of speech technology is being driven by the
increasing comfort in the use of speech by consumers, resulting in the demand
for fully voice-enabled experiences across many industry segments,” said Davide
Franco, chief executive officer and chairman of the board, Loquendo.
Together, both companies will provide a range of best-in-class
solutions, delivering natural, conversational interactions across a number of
growing markets that will initially include enterprise, mobile and automotive
with a significant opportunity to accelerate our efforts in Europe and Latin
America.
Through this acquisition, Nuance
intends to expand its operations and accelerate growth in four key areas:
Advanced Voice Solutions for New and Emerging Markets –
Nuance and Loquendo’s combined technologies will advance groundbreaking voice
capabilities through robust TTS, ASR and voice biometrics offerings –
broadening Nuance’s global footprint especially in Europe and Latin America.
Strong Global Customer and Partner Relationships – The
acquisition provides Nuance’s and Loquendo’s customers and partners access to
the industry’s largest and most experienced voice and language portfolio.
Loquendo’s technical expertise and talent, combined with Nuance’s global
R&D resources and market strength, will accelerate a robust product and
services roadmap to deliver state-of-the-art solutions for customers and
partners.
Robust Language Support – Loquendo has strong proficiency
in Latin languages, which provides Nuance with the broadest language support in
the industry with the goal to drive natural, conversational interactions across
a number of industry segments in the user’s preferred language.
Innovation – Both companies offer sophisticated
voice-enabled technologies. Together, Nuance and Loquendo will be able to
accelerate innovation through a new center of excellence for speech research,
based in Turin, Italy. This expands upon Nuance’s existing research and
development facilities in Sunnyvale, CA, Burlington, MA, Aachen, Germany,
Merelbeke, Belgium, Zurich, Switzerland and Montreal, Quebec.
By Telecomlead.com Team
editor@telecomlead.com
