SVOX and Kirusa Partner to Deliver Multimodal Solutions

Partnership targets increasing demand for mobile multimodal applications in Europe

New York, New York – September 14, 2004: Kirusa, the world’s leading provider of multimodal solutions, and SVOX, the award winning supplier of text-to-speech software, today announced a partnership to bring to market Kirusa Multimodal Solution integrated with SVOX Text-to-Speech Software.

Kirusa and SVOX have successfully integrated their platforms to create the joint multimodal solution for wireless carriers, automotive manufacturers, and enterprises. Having been successfully deployed and tested at Forschungszentrum Telekommunikation Wien (FTW), the multimodal solution is available immediately, and is being sold jointly by the two companies.

Combining today’s two most popular mobile communications technologies, the innovative multimodal solution leverages the best of visual and vocal interfaces on mobile devices. Subscribers can receive visual responses while they are interacting with a vocal application, and can choose to enter information by voice and hear the results while interacting with a screen-based application. For instance, in a telematics application, music options can be selected by voice, with the results displayed on a screen, and confirmed by voice. In a messaging application, a teenage subscriber could send an SMS message to his friend asking for the social plans for the evening, and the friend could listen and respond with a voice message. Empowered to avoid the difficulty of keypad entry and the memory strain of vocal output, users can take advantage of the powerful visual capabilities of SMS, and HTML, together with the flexibility of a voice interface.

SVOX Text-to-Speech allows users to hear dynamic information spoken by natural voices. SVOX’s language-independent text-to-speech system architecture can be very easily tailored to specific customer needs. SVOX TTS has a highly scalable and open architecture, which is low risk, quickly available and customizable to various TTS applications such as email/SMS-reading, caller name announcement, traffic announcement or navigation prompts. The modular SVOX Text-to-Speech Engine is available in different product variants that cover the complete range of text-to-speech applications – from server-based SVOX Corporate to SVOX Genie for lowest footprint systems running on mobile phones or other consumer products.

“True value for customers lies in easy-to-use applications”, said Volker Jantzen, CEO of SVOX. “The combination of Kirusa’s and SVOX’s capabilities provides the synergies needed for real progress in usability.”

Enabling wireless carriers, service providers, and enterprises to offer applications with integrated voice and visual interfaces, Kirusa’s multimodal solutions allow mobile users to simultaneously or alternatively use voice, text, graphics, keypad, and stylus to interface with wireless services and applications. The solution integrates seamlessly with industry standard technologies such as SMS, WAP, XHTML, VoiceXML, and HTTP, and supports all major mobile networks, including CDMA, CDMA 1x/3x, GSM, GPRS, UMTS, Flash OFDM, WiFi, and others. Enabling compelling multimodal end-user applications on a wide variety of handsets from all major manufacturers – carriers and enterprises offering this dynamic service are able to monetize voice and data applications immediately, leveraging the new smart devices, as well as devices already widely deployed in their networks.

“We are delighted to partner with SVOX to bring to market a fully pre-integrated multimodal platform”, said Ewald Anderl, Vice President and CTO of Kirusa. “The partnership benefits our customers by providing them with a proven and fully supported platform in their preferred language, thereby enhancing the usability and adoption of applications amongst their mobile users.” 

About SVOX

SVOX AG was founded in 2000 as a spin-off of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich). Its core product is text-to-speech software. The multiple award-winning SVOX technology is used in fields such as automotive and mobile devices, telecommunications and call centers. SVOX differentiates itself by offering customized text-to-speech. With SVOX's software architecture customers are offered a text-to-speech engine adaptable to their technical and market needs. Alongside clients such as Swisscom and D-Link, SVOX also collaborates closely with partners such as Harman/Becker, Siemens mobile, Siemens VDO, VoiceGenie, Code Factory, Voice Robots, ONCE and ART.

For more information about SVOX please call its headquarters at +41 (43) 544 0627 or visit www.svox.com.

About Kirusa

Kirusa is one of the leading global developers of Mobile Social Media and Value Added Services enabling mobile subscribers to reach out to their family and friends. Kirusa’s solutions include the hugely successful Kirusa Voice SMS service, the world’s most advanced Voice SMS solution, used by over 30 carriers around the world. Kirusa has pioneered a suite of social media applications that facilitate mobile subscribers to interact through voice, including the Call-n-Tweet application which helps users update their Twitter status using voice. Kirusa provides an open platform with APIs to enable third parties to offer mobile applications services to mobile subscribers. Used by mobile subscribers millions of times daily, Kirusa solutions are built on its patented and patent pending technology and its highly reliable and scalable open multimodal platform. Kirusa has been recognized as one of top 100 technology companies by Silicon India, and one of top 25 emerging technology companies by Smart Techie magazine. Headquartered in New Jersey and led by an experienced team of wireless telecom executives and technologists, Kirusa has offices in three continents. ‘Kirusa Voice SMS,’ is a trademark of Kirusa, Inc.

For more information visit: www.kirusa.com.

Media Contacts

Kirusa
Navneet Anand
GreyMatters Communications
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