There hasn’t been coverage in the English-speaking press, but this posting on a Web site called “Save Loquendo” indicates (based mostly on Google Translate) that:

In recent days the leaders of Telecom Italia have confirmed the imminent sale of Loquendo to a large American company (competitor) with a product portfolio and technology that is similar to Loquendo’s but a hugely disproportionate market cap.

The article’s writer seems to point to Nuance as the acquirer by asserting that the prospective acquirer has a history of major acquisitions in the speech technology space (with the further comment that it has led to disposal of assets along with loss of know-how, expertise, patents, etc.

Loquendo was established as a research-oriented subsidiary of Telecom Italia in 2001. Its line of speech processing technologies spans server-based and embedded automated speech recognition, text-to-speech rendering and voice biometrics. As the posting points out, it has over 100 employees and has been profitable since 2004 with revenues of roughly $13 million (US) in 2010.

The timing (of the post) means that this is bound to be the talk of SpeechTek, which is one of two major conferences dedicated solely to speech processing. On the one hand the specter of antitrust and anti-competitiveness rears its head. Loquendo is one of the few core technology providers with as broad a portfolio of software and technology as Nuance. On the other hand, as I will be discussing on a panel with Dan Hong and Bill Meisel on Tuesday, speech processing customarily comprises only part of a product or solution.

There is an “opportunity continuum” that starts with speech detection/acoustic processing, speaker detection/ID, speech recognition/understanding, transcription, translation … and so on — each presenting opportunities on servers, in-the-cloud, on mobile devices, in cars, household appliances and toys.

In each of these domains there are multiple players and specialists. In voice-based search/translation/transcription, Google has a leadership role – along with Microsoft. There are dozens of “players” in speaker verification and identification (which itself is customarily part of a “layered, multifactor” solution. Mobile or embedded resources is an area with a high level of competition and high levels of demand for personalized services that are “conversational” in nature.

I don’t know what the terms and conditions are surrounding the sale of Loquendo by Telecom Italia to Nuance (or another competitor in the speech-enabled world), but I will observe that incumbent telcos (former PTT’s, if you will) have not demonstrated the ability to deliver innovative products or services at a global scale.

Categories: Articles

Tags: speech processing, Voice biometrics, Loquendo, Mergers and Acquisitions