Nuance buys UK’s Spinvox

UK technology firm Spinvox, which converts voicemails into texts, has been bought by US speech recognition firm Nuance for a knockdown €71m (£64m).

Nuance is a dominant player in the healthcare applications of digital dictation and voice recognition technologies.

Spinvox had been regarded as one of the most promising British technology firms, but had failed to deliver on early promise. More than €139m has been invested in the company so far, which has also been given a €21m loan.

Spinvox investor Invesco Perpetual had confirmed in September that Spinvox was up for sale.

According to a BBC News report Nuance says it is too early to say what impact the deal will have on Spinvox’s 230 staff. The US Speech Recognition giant also declined to comment on whether Spinvox founders will remain on board.

The company claims to use advanced voice recognition software for its service, but in recent months doubts had been cast on how effective Spinvox’s speech-to-text software actually was.

The BBC alleged in July that Spinvox used human operators to perform translations for its voicemail-to-SMS service rather than an automated computer system.

The claims were denied by Spinvox, but the firm said it did use human operatives to improve the accuracy of its voice message conversion system.

Nuance said the acquisition would help it to accelerate growth in three areas: service quality, global reach and innovation in the voice-to-text space.

“Around the world, the voice-to-text market has experienced tremendous growth over the last year, with a variety of innovative services being delivered by carriers and unified communications providers,” said John Pollard, vice president of Nuance Voice-to-Text Services.