SVOX

Not to be confused with Xbox.
SVOX
Private
Industry Speech Processing, Natural Language Processing
Predecessor SVOX GmbH
Founded 2000 (GmbH), 2001 (AG)
Founder Volker Jantzen
Christof Traber (GmbH)[1]
Bettina Hein
Thomas Benz (AG) [2]
Headquarters Zurich, Switzerland
Area served
Global
Key people
Martin Reber, (CEO)
Products Speech Recognition (ASR), Speech Output (TTS), Speech Dialog
Number of employees
90 (2009)
For the Canadian media company, see S-VOX.

SVOX is an embedded speech technology company founded in 2000 and headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland. SVOX was acquired by Nuance Communications in 2011. Company’s products included Automated Speech Recognition (ASR), Text-to-Speech (TTS) and Speech Dialog systems, with customers mostly being manufacturers and system integrators in automotive and mobile device industries.

History

SVOX was started in 2000 by researchers at Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich) and first focused exclusively on Speech Output (TTS) solutions for automotive industry.

In 2002 Siemens Mobile Acceleration (today's smac|partners GmbH) invested into SVOX.[3]

Later, as the market for Personal Navigation Devices and smartphones developed, the company started to supply those markets as well. In 2008 SVOX released Pico, a small-footprint TTS system optimized for mobile phones.[4]

In parallel, SVOX has branched into Speech Recognition and Speech Dialog. As part of that process the company acquired Professional Speech Processing Group of Siemens AG in early 2009.[5]

In 2009 SVOX made headlines with news that Google had chosen to include company’s Pico TTS solution into the 1.6 release of Android platform.[6]

In June 2011, Nuance Communications acquired SVOX.[7]

Products

SVOX products include Automated Speech Recognition (ASR), Text-to-Speech (TTS) and Speech Dialog systems. Typical uses include:

Company’s speech products are especially popular with German car makers such as Audi, Porsche, BMW, Daimler and VW and are often found in premium cars.

See also

References

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 12/15/2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.