“In the past SVOX has only been providing technology for making cars and portable devices talk to you,” Mr. Jantzen said. “As a result of this deal, we are now able to make those devices also understand what you are saying. A real dialog between you and the machine is therefore now possible – all from SVOX. We will continue to innovate to enable natural and intuitive communication between humans and machines.”
As a result of the acquisition SVOX will immediately offer its own Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) products as well as complete speech dialog solutions. The deal allows SVOX to significantly reinforce its position in embedded speech solutions for the automotive and mobile phone industry and strengthen its technology leadership. The enlarged company will have a commanding market share in speech solutions for premium cars.
“By this acquisition SVOX is widening its portfolio of best-of-breed speech products,” Mr. Jantzen noted. “We are now in a position to offer complete speech solutions that are highly optimized for embedded environments.”
According to Mr. Jantzen, SVOX strategy is to enhance the end user experience by enabling a more intuitive speech dialog. “This combination is a natural fit because both companies have a long history of cooperation in various high-profile automotive projects, where Siemens ASR and SVOX TTS were successfully deployed as part of the same infotainment system,” he said.
Reinhold Achatz, Head of Siemens Corporate Research and Technologies, said “The transfer of the Professional Speech Processing Group to SVOX is clearly a positive development for our customers and the team members. With its leading position in embedded speech solutions and unique base of automotive and mobile customers SVOX is well positioned to exploit the obvious synergies of developing TTS, ASR and speech dialog solutions under the same roof.”