Time for British company Spinvox to go

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: When Spinvox, British voicemail-to-text Company was launched in 2003, it won acclaim for its innovative use of speech recognition technology and its future looked bright. Nothing was known at that time that the company once known as the rising star in the British technology companies will lose both its name and recognition within a few years.

US based Nuance Communications, a speech-recognition company is about to take over Spinvox, for US$150 million. The reason behind the turmoil in the company is accredited to the failure of some of the promising contracts with major operators.

Last year, the company was allegedly accused of using human intervention” rather than automatic translation of the voicemails. However, Christine Domecq, the founder of the company declined the allegations saying that human intervention is used only when the technology can’t get a fix on the spoken word.

Even after the controversy, Spinvox succeeded in signing deals with big telcos and mobile service providers like Telefonica in South America and Telstra of Australia. However, Spinvox munched its way through more than $150 million of backer’s cash and was close to collapse. Invesco’s, smaller Spinvox backer, market statement indicating that Spinvox was up for sale made the things worse.

Though Spinvox’s account for 2008 is still to be filed at Companies House in London, there is rumour that in the year the company lost some $80 million on sales of $15 million.