Nuance's SpinVox acquisition set to boost voice-to-text messaging

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 31 December 2009 10:05

IT Industry - Strategy

Pollard said: "We don't have a well documented number...but we believe there are about two dozen carriers worldwide offering this type of service." He said that the SpinVox product was in some ways superior to the Nuance offering and would result in a stronger product once integration had been completed.

"The technology platform is a pipeline with many components...DSPs, natural language processing, speech recognition. With this acquisition we are getting some great technologies across different parts of that pipeline...In some cases stronger than what Nuance has had."

He added: "Nuance has been very strong in the core speech recognition technology and we will be integrating that into the SpinVox system over the next weeks and months."

Nuance Mobile's speech recognition technology is based on that used in its Dragon Naturally Speaking products and, like SpinVox, the Nuance Mobile speech recognition technology is supplemented by human operators.

However, whereas SpinVox was embarrassed by the revelation of human intervention, Nuance was upfront about this. When it announced Nuance Mobile it said "The Nuance Voicemail to Text Service integrates speech technology with over 3,000 Nuance transcriptionists, hosted in a Nuance-owned facility, with proven security, scalability, and reliability."

In this region Nuance sees both Telstra and Optus as key flagship customers to help it take the product to more operators. "When you have leaders like Telstra and Optus roll things out, the market shifts and it becomes an expectation," Pollard said. "And we see that happening region by region. There are about two dozen carriers worldwide offering this type of service and we expect that number to explode over the next two years."

He added: "Our goal is to provide [Telstra and Optus] with stability and a strong product roadmap to enhance and expand the service. We have spoken to them and they are very pleased about this acquisition."

Pollard said the Nuance Mobile and SpinVox products and operations would be combined eventually. Chidiac said that Nuance had about 35 people in Australia, which is its regional headquarters. SpinVox, he said, had four or five people in Australia. He was unable to comment on their future. "We don't yet know how the structure will end up," he said.