Voice Recognition: The Wave Of The Future?

Some Good Economic News

Hey, even as Wall Street and the rest of the world are fretting over another global recession, and the NYSE gyrating back and forth like a yo yo, there are still some silver linings in this economy.  And of course, one of them is the Biometrics Industry.  Although I am sure this industry has been affected by the economy in the last few years, none the less, it has seen steady growth, and the projections of it are always pretty rosy.  Part of this good news for the Biometrics Industry is the fact there is still a significant amount of M and A activity.  And today, we come across that today. 

A major Biometrics Vendor known as “Nuance Communications, Inc.” has just announced that is buying out “Loquendo”, which is a division of Telecom Italia.  The details:  “Nuance Communications, Inc.  today 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. In particular, it 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 . . . 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.”  (SOURCE:  http://www.findbiometrics.com/industry-news/i/9171/). 

My Take

There is no doubt that this acquisition by Naunce is a win-win combination for the company.  I mean after all, they are gobbling up a recognized brand in voice technology.  Heck, they have voice solutions in 32 languages, deployed in some 20+ million devices.  Here are some of the ramifications of this M and A:

*More advanced Voice Biometrics solutions for the emerging markets:  This will hold especially true for the European countries, and those in Latin America;

*Better customer relationships:  This acquisition is deemed to be one of the largest in the industry, so as a result, customers as well as potential ones will have access to some of the best resources available;

*The solutions offered can be used across a wide spectrum of applications, including those involving in house, networked, or even embedded types of applications;

*Greater innovation:  Through this activity, Nuance will also be obtaining the research center, which is based out of Turin, Italy.

The above are all obvious, without a doubt.  But, I think the ramifications will run deeper than this.  In my view as a tech writer, Voice Biometrics is an unknown technology.  Yea, it’s out there, but you don’t hear a lot of organizations or businesses using it (except mostly the financial industry).  I think this buyout will for sure propel Voice Biometrics into the frontier in the industry.  With Smartphones keep getting smaller, there will be a continued and much greater thirst to protect these devices. 

And Biometrics is going to be primarily be used here, in this regard.  Right now, Fingerprint Recognition is primarily being used, but Voice Recognition will probably be the dominant one here, in its due amount of time.  That is Voice Recognition is considered to be one of the easier Biometric Technologies to use, as there is not much hardware or software to implement. 

And with this, all you have to do is speak into your Smartphone in order to be fully verified.  Really, who wants to use their finger, especially under harsh environmental conditions???  As mentioned above, this acquisition will propel Voice Biometrics into the next frontier in terms of innovation, especially in the Wireless markets.  So after September of this year, let’s see what happens, as this deal is expected to close by then.

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