SVOX Enters Into Technology Licensing Agreement With Vianix®

ZURICH, July 27 /PRNewswire/ -- SVOX, the leading provider of speech solutions, today announced that it has entered into a Technology Licensing Agreement with Vianix, the premier supplier of speech processing technology for unsurpassed voice quality. This agreement gives SVOX and its customers immediate access to unrivaled audio coding technologies for outstanding speech quality in automotive, mobile and consumer electronics applications. The global market opportunity for automotive and mobile speech technology is several hundred million dollars.

Martin Reber, SVOX CEO, said: "SVOX continually surveys the industry for potential partners who can be sources of differentiating expertise in order to both create value for their customers and enhance the SVOX leadership role. SVOX found that Vianix not only fits this profile perfectly, it also shared a vision of leadership in a challenging competitive environment."

"We are very pleased to add SVOX as a licensee of our technology," said Reza Hashampour, Vianix' CEO.  "Their text-to-speech and speech recognition solutions are broadly viewed as industry-leading, and the incorporation of our technology will further increase their lead. We have a great working relationship in place and look forward to joining them in providing new and innovative future solutions as well".

Mr. Reber added: "We have filled a gap at the highest end of audio quality that is rapidly becoming a must-have for our customers. Vianix technology has valuable impact now and will have even more impact in the future as we expand our offerings in a space which will clearly benefit from more vendor choices."

SVOX is constantly working to extend and update its portfolio of ASR and polyglot TTS languages. Customers can now choose from a total of 19 ASR and 26 TTS languages, with additional languages under development.

About SVOX AG

SVOX, a leading supplier of speech solutions, has a reputation for quality and customer focus. SVOX drives adoption of speech user interfaces in the automotive, mobile device and consumer electronics industries. The company offers an application development framework (Integrated Speech Services platform), as well as separate components including Speech Recognition (ASR), Speech Output (TTS) and complete Speech Dialog solutions. Furthermore, SVOX is active in solutions for acoustic signal enhancement such as echo cancellation and noise reduction, hands-free solutions or high end in-car-communication systems. SVOX focus on quality and the use of flexible software architectures allows for optimized embedded speech solutions that can be easily tailored to customers' technical requirements and market needs. For more information, please visit: www.svox.com.

About Vianix®

Vianix® is a fast paced technology company with corporate headquarters located in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Created in April 2000 by its parent company iMPAQ™ Corporation, one of the region's leading computer network and IT integrators, Vianix® has developed MASC® (Managed Audio Sound Compression) and SPART® (Speech Processing for Automatic Recognition Technology), speech algorithm suites, which provides users with the most memory efficient, highest quality speech processing available for both human intelligibility and ASR accuracy. Through strategic partnerships with domestic and international designers, manufacturers and distributors, Vianix® is supplying customers with the most innovative consumer electronic technology available.

Guided by the visionary leadership of Reza Hashampour, President and Chief Executive Officer, Vianix has created a unique and innovative business model. Hashampour has assembled a team of seasoned industry professionals and has established strong strategic partnerships with many industry leaders. It is through this kind of forward thinking that Vianix is able to focus its attention on developing unique, innovative, enterprise, industrial and consumer electronic technology.  More information on Vianix is available at www.vianix.com.

SOURCE SVOX AG