FONIX (FONX)

[Steeley]

Microsoft chooses ART and Fonix voice tech for the SmartPhone platform. IMO, MSFT choose ART so as not to alienate wireless OEMs that currently use ART tech.
However, MSFT choose Fonix over ART for the Xbox. It appears that ART is now in
engaged in damage control, partnering with SVOX to incorporate TTS into their wireless solution.




ART & Samsung

Several wireless manufacturers and chip suppliers have licensed previous versions of smARTspeak and its Voice Dialing features including Samsung, LGIC, Motorola, Ascom, IBM/CommQuest, Lucent/Optimay and others. 10 million wireless phones have shipped in the Far East, Europe and the United States this year alone with ART's smARTspeak technology. In Korea, the popularity of Voice Dialing has created a standard for all wireless phones, in which smARTspeak Voice Dialing strongly holds 60% of the market share with LGIC and Samsung Electronics as partners. In the US, Sprint PCS initiated a mega-trend with the brand labeling of two Samsung phones with ART's smARTspeak Voice Dialing - the SCH2000 released last September, and the SCH 1500, which just recently hit store shelves. The European market warmly welcomed the Samsung SGH-500, which was released earlier this year, incorporating ART's smARTspeak Voice Dialing features.
http://www.artcomp.com/news/pr/pr990621.htm


ART & SVOX

ART Advanced Recognition Technologies and SVOX have signed a technical co-operation and comarketing agreement.
According to the agreement, SVOX and ART will be offering a comprehensive speech recognition and TTS (text-to-speech) solution for cellular handsets, wireless devices, PDAs and automotive systems.
Integrating the companies' two advanced technologies, the solution will provide a complete user interface for a whole range of new applications designed for all Symbian-based and Smartphone 2002 platforms, as well as ARM 7-based handsets.
One major benefit of this cooperation will be improved safety on the road.
For example, a driver who wants to make a phone call will use speech recognition from ART to voice-dial.
Then the text-to-speech application from SVOX will read back the name or number, thus enabling the driver to confirm its accuracy without looking away from the road.
"SVOX expects this cooperation agreement with ART to lead to a whole range of new and exciting applications for mobile device users", says Volker Jantzen, CEO of SVOX.
He adds: "By integrating these two advanced technologies, both designed for today's most popular platforms, we are opening new doors of creative possibilities for OEMs and independent developers".
"ART is delighted with this new co-operation with SVOX", says Eran Aharonson, President of ART.
"Integrating two high-performance technologies is always a very exciting process, and both our companies expect the results to impact positively on the marketplace within a very short time".
http://www.electronicstalk.com/news/arb/arb112.html


SVOX Introduces Concatenative TTS for Symbian OS
ZURICH, SWITZERLAND - SVOX AG announced a new development in its TTS software. With SVOX Mobile, the embedded product line for mobile phones, SVOX launches a concatenative text-to-speech for the Symbian OS.
The product has a low memory storage requirement (footprint) of less than 1 MB. This is possible due to compression methods applied to the text-to-speech software of SVOX, which also allows for personalized features such as individual voices, languages and dictionaries.
“SVOX Mobile compliments our portfolio of embedded products and further demonstrates the continuous technological leadership in the industry”, says Alex Fries, Chief Marketing Officer. “The demand for high quality, low memory text-to-speech has increased dramatically over the past few months. The SVOX embedded product portfolio is a natural fit to the requirements of a multi-modal environment. A SVOX text-to-speech engine scales from a unit selection server based application down to an embedded distributed system” adds Dr. Martin Reber, Director Embedded Solutions at SVOX.
http://www.speechtechmag.com/pub/industry/1057-1.html
http://212.82.243.19/svox_partner_2.php
http://212.82.243.19/svox_produkt_1_e.php