Nuance buys ailing SpinVox

SpinVox has seen its star wane over the past few months

Voice recognition software vendor Nuance has bought beleaguered voice-to-text firm SpinVox in a $102.5m (£64m) deal which it hopes will expand the capabilities of its advanced speech recognition platform.

SpinVox had been the subject of a privacy controversy this year which saw its star wane significantly, and commentators believe Nuance has managed to snap up the ailing firm at a knock down price.

The BBC alleged in July that SpinVox used human operatives in third world countries to perform translations for its voicemail-to-SMS service rather than an automated computer system.

The firm issued a rebuttal of the claims a day later, saying they were "both incorrect and inaccurate". However, it did concede that some human intervention had been necessary in its service to increase the accuracy of its Voice Message Conversion System.

Nuance said that 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.

"With SpinVox's robust infrastructure, language support and operational experience, we will broaden the reach and capabilities of our platform."