Amazon acquire IVONA text to speech
Amazon have acquired leading text-to-speech technology company IVONA Software, IVONA already powers the “Text-to-Speech,” “Voice Guide” and “Explore by Touch” features on Kindle Fire tablets.
IVONA offer voice and language services in 17 languages as 44 different voices and more in development, but Amazon have given no indication as to what they might use the service for in the future. We can guess at rivals to Apple’s SIRI and we know Amazon are likely to launch a smartphone at some time in the near future. It’s also likely that more voice applications will be introduced to the Kindle family. With the aim to make every book every printed available within a minute on the Kindle, it would make also make sense to have them available for the hard of hearing as talking books.
At the end of the day however it might just be simple economics – if you intend to use a company for say the next ten years, it might simply be cheaper to buy them than to pay for their services.
Amfm says
10:30 am on 26/01/2013
I use that technology on my kindle when I have a migraine
It’s very , very poor and not as good as a drone would sound
puddleglums rest says
11:30 am on 26/01/2013
yet to come across any of these that can cope with british regional accents
Amfm says
10:29 pm on January 27th, 2013
So true
Vick2N says
7:58 pm on 28/01/2013
No way iSpeech isn’t better than these guys.