- Over 10 million mobile and on-board navigation systems which carry Loquendo Technologies are now deployed globally.
- Loquendo grew its installed base of best of breed speech technologies to more than 110 thousands ports worldwide, with double-digit growth on 2008 figures.
- Reinforced its market position, developing strategic alliances with key players in all market segments.
- Grew its portfolio of leading vendors of Call Centers, PBXs, IVRs and Unified Communications technology, with whom Loquendo speech technologies have achieved interoperability and/or certification, among which Avaya, Nortel, Cisco, Genesys, Alcatel-Lucent, Interactive Intelligence, thus widening its commercial reach worldwide.
- Expanded its portfolio of prestigious customers in every sector: some 15 carriers worldwide, covering all of Europe and Latin America; major IVR vendors, automotive customers both for in-car devices and PNDs, banks, health care, government agencies, and many more.
How did Loquendo succeed in achieving these goals?
The increase of our market penetration was made possible thanks to:
Global language coverage
During the year Loquendo released 2 new languages - Norwegian and Australian English - along with 7 new voices, making the Loquendo portfolio of 28 languages and 69 TTS voices even more global.
New product features
All Loquendo products were improved and upgraded with new features:
- Loquendo TTS 7.8 with 44 kHz Audio, support for Remote Java APIs and 64-bit HW, native support for .mp3 audio.
- Loquendo ASR 7.8 with export of word lattices, X-SAMPA phonetic transcriptions, more efficient Acoustic Model Adaptation, with much more still in the lab and due for release during 2010.
- Loquendo MRCP (v1 & v2) Server 7.1 with extended Linux support, making interfacing to IVRs & platforms even easier.
- VoxNauta 7.0.26 with increased density and support for IETF RFC 4240 (Netann protocol), which allows VoxNauta to be used as a Media Resource Function (MRF) within IMS architecture.
- Embedded TTS and ASR benefited from resource optimization.
- Finally, extended support of new platforms across the whole product portfolio (many new Linux flavours, support for 64 bit OS, new embedded platforms such as QNX and Android).
New channels
Reinforced its presence in NA through the partnership with MicroAutomation, thus expanding U.S. and Canada Speech Service Support.
New markets
2009 has also seen Loquendo solutions and technologies being taken up in new sectors, such as voice enabled set-top-boxes, training systems for air traffic controllers, and in mobile applications markets. Loquendo consolidated its presence in the established markets for IVRs, Intelligence, Navigation (portable and in-car), Assistive technology, virtual web assistants, to name but a few.
Moreover
In August 2009, Loquendo was honoured with a double award from STM: the 'Market Leader Award' for its speech engine along with the 'Speech Luminary 2009 Award' - presented to Loquendo's Director of International Standards, Paolo Baggia. According to Speech Technology magazine, Loquendo was selected for The Market Leader Award because of its high scores "for accuracy, cost, customization and integration, and innovation". The company was also praised for offering "not only great technology, but a strong research angle that pushed the technology forward."
Finally,
We’d like to take this moment to thank all our customers and partners for their belief in Loquendo and our products. This inspiring climate of mutual trust has continued to boost business for all of us despite these challenging economic times..
Loquendo looks forward to driving your business in the new economic era with a whole host of innovative features that we are preparing to bring to market, to make 2010 our best year yet!
Loquendo wishes you the very best for the Festive Season and a Happy and Prosperous New Year.
 LATEST PRODUCT NEWS
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Loquendo Launches TTS in Norwegian, Plus New Australian English and Greek Voices
December 11th, 2009 | Loquendo releases Loquendo TTS in Norwegian with the female voice of Vilde, along with a new Greek male voice and a new Australian female voice...
>> More |
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Loquendo ASR Released in Australian English
December 10th, 2009 | Loquendo has released Loquendo ASR in Australian English - bringing the Loquendo Speech Recognition portfolio to 25 languages ... >> More |
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Loquendo MRCP Server Extends Linux Support to 64 bit
December 4th, 2009 | Loquendo releases Loquendo MRCP Server 7.1.3 and Loquendo Speech Suite 7.0.8, extending support to the following Linux ... >> More |
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Release of Loquendo ASR 7.8
November 19th, 2009 | Loquendo releases version 7.8 of its speech recognition engine - Loquendo ASR - offering the following enhancements ... >> More |
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LOQUENDO@WORK - SPEECH TECHNOLOGY IN ACTION
RoboBraille and Loquendo support visually impaired users around the word
December 15th, 2009 | RoboBraille provides audio content to the visually and reading impaired community around the world ... >> More
LUNA project concluded successfully
December 14th, 2009 | Loquendo is proud to announce that the three-year LUNA project (Spoken Languange UNderstanding in MultilinguAl Communication Systems) has concluded successfully ... >> More
Loquendo Text-to-Speech Powers Intel's New Speech-Enabled Handheld Device for People with Reading Difficulties
December 9th, 2009 | Loquendo announces that Loquendo TTS has been integrated into the Intel® Reader - the recently launched mobile, handheld device which reads aloud printed text to assist those with dyslexia or other learning disabilities ... >> More
Loquendo TTS Featured on DynaVox Mayer-Johnson's New Xpress Speech Communication Solution
December 2nd, 2009 | Loquendo announces that the company's next generation text-to-speech (TTS) technology has been incorporated into DynaVox Mayer-Johnson’s innovative new Xpress communication device ... >> More
Alpine Electronics of America, Inc. Chooses Loquendo as Speech Partner for its Next Generation Navigation Products
December 1st, 2009 | Loquendo and Alpine Electronics of America Inc. ("Alpine") announce their new partnership to add text-to-speech (TTS) technology to Alpine's future navigation products ... >> More
| STANDARDS CORNER
Use Cases for Possible Future EMMA Features is Published
15 December 2009
The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has published a Group Note of Use Cases for Possible Future EMMA Features. Since EMMA 1.0 became a W3C Recommendation, a number of new possible use cases for the EMMA language have emerged, e.g., multimodal output, biometrics, emotion, sensor data, multi-stage dialogs and interactions with multiple users. This document describes those use cases and illustrates how the EMMA language could be extended to support them.
Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 3.0 Draft Published
3 December 2009
The Voice Browser Working Group has published a Working Draft of Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML) 3.0. This document specifies VoiceXML 3.0, a modular XML language for creating interactive media dialogs that feature synthesized speech, recognition of spoken and DTMF key input, telephony, mixed initiative conversations, and recording and presentation of a variety of media formats including digitized audio, and digitized video. A list of changes from the previous draft is available.
Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces (MMI Architecture) Working Draft Published
1 December 2009
The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces (MMI Architecture), which defines a general and flexible framework providing interoperability between modality-specific components from different vendors - for example, speech recognition from one vendor, and handwriting recognition from another. The document as a whole has changed significantly and the group welcomes any reviews. The main changes from the previous draft are (1) clarifying the relationship to EMMA, (2) simplifying the architecture constituents, (3) adding a description of HTTP transport of lifecycle events and (4) adding an example of handwriting recognition modality components. A diff-marked version of this document is available.
First Draft of Emotion Markup Language (EmotionML) 1.0 Published
30 October 2009
The Multimodal Interaction Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Emotion Markup Language (EmotionML) 1.0. EmotionML provides representations of emotions and related states for technological applications. The aim of this draft is to strike a balance between practical applicability and scientific well-foundedness of emotion specification. The language is conceived as a "plug-in" language suitable for use in three different areas: (1) manual annotation of data, (2) automatic recognition of emotion-related states from user behavior and (3) generation of emotion-related system behavior.
State Chart XML (SCXML) Working Draft Published
29 October 2009
The Voice Browser Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of State Chart XML (SCXML): State Machine Notation for Control Abstraction. SCXML is a general-purpose event-based state machine language that may be used in a number of ways: e.g. as a high-level dialog language, controlling VoiceXML 3.0's encapsulated speech modules; or as a multimodal control language in the MultiModal Interaction framework. The main difference from the previous draft is the correction of various inconsistencies. A diff-marked version of this document is also available for comparison purposes. |
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EVENTS
WHITE PAPERS and ARTICLES
>> Zen and the Art of Speech Recognition, Loquendo
>> Q&A with Luciano Piovano - VP, Government Intelligence Solutions, Loquendo
>> Loquendo: Wherever There's Speech |
