In an effort to improve ts popular tablet computer, Kindle Fire, Amazon recently acquired Ivona, a text-to-speech service.
This isn’t the first time the companies collaborated efforts. Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) mentioned that they’ve already used the company’s technology to power up their text-to-speech feature, voice guide, and “Explore-by-Touch” features on the Fire tablet. Ivona also offers its text-to-speech products and other services to thousands of businesses, individuals, and developers all over the world. Ivona offers many language and voice portfolios including forty-four voices in seventeen different languages.
The terms of the acquisition deal have yet to be disclosed.
It’s reported that Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) wants to create a service that compete’s with Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s Siri voice assistant program as well as Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (LON:BC94) (KRX:005930)’s S Voice, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG)’s TellMe, and Google Actions.
Ivona’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Lukasz Osowski said, “For more than ten years, the IVONA team has been focused on creating innovative text-to-speech technologies. We are all thrilled that Amazon is supporting our growth so that we can continue to innovate and deliver exceptional voice and language support for our customers.”
The tech company’s current offerings include a variety of products and services such as studio software, speech clouds, speech server, online voice clouds, and more.
Amazon Kindle Fire Vice President also explained that the IVONA team shares their same vision for customer service and innovation. They also look forward to working with them to launch world-class voice service solutions throughout the world.
Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN)’s Kindle Fire is already a huge success as a budget tablet and an alternative to the iPad. In order for them to continue to stay relevant in the market, Amazon needs to evolve their products and services. This acquisition is a huge step towards that.
As Ivona’s voice and language portfolio continues to grow, Amazon’s Kindle Fire should continue to evolve with better technology.
