L&H buys speech rival Dragon

Speech recognition software vendor Lernout & Hauspie (L&H) has snapped up arch-rival Dragon Systems in a deal worth about $600m (£378m) in stock.

The Belgian-based company said today it has signed an agreement to acquire US-based Dragon in a move that gives L&H the lion's share of the US voice recognition market. Dragon currently holds a 50 per cent share in the region.

L&H and Dragon will pool their resources, and work on projects to accelerate the use of speech and language in emerging and mainstream consumer markets.

In particular, L&H said it is keen to pursue new opportunities in areas such as handheld and mobile devices, automotive, Wap and data mining. The vendor said the merger will also help it meet the growing demand for speech and language applications in markets such as telephony and healthcare.

The increased research and development resources and combined intellectual properties should also enable L&H to create speech products that are more intuitive and user-friendly, and that appeal to a wider group of consumers.

L&H said the deal, which should be completed by the second half of this year, will provide it with 350 additional employees, 170 of whom are research scientists and development engineers.

Gaston Bastiens, L&H president and chief executive, said: "By combining our talent with Dragon, we are pooling some of the best speech and language minds in the industry to create speech solutions that are even more user-friendly and applicable for broader, more consumer-oriented markets than ever before."

"We should be able to speed our 'time to market' with existing projects that to date we have not had the resources to tackle."

Bastiens said in the near term, L&H would be able to accelerate its 'time to market' for its prototype handheld device, codenamed NAK, which uses voice recognition to send and receive email, surf the web and conduct ecommerce transactions.

See also:

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Dragon NaturallySpeaking Mobile Organizer

A digital voice recorder that will connect to your PC and transcribe your words directly into a word processor, email or organiser package.  30 Apr 2000

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Forthcoming product releases from language and speech technology specialist Lernout & Hauspie (L&H) mark a significant improvement in technologies that have a reputation for failing to deliver.  17 Apr 2000

Microsoft unveils voice-activated wireless device

Microsoft has publicly demonstrated a prototype of its Mipad web-enabled, voice-activated handheld device for the first time.  24 Mar 2000

UK executives want more voice recognition technology

UK captains of industry are betting that voice-activated technology will replace keyboards and mice in future, but are less convinced by the prospect of a paperless office.  31 Jan 2000

Military scientists work on speech recognition

British military scientists will work to develop speech recognition applications for mobile phone and Internet users under a joint venture launched this month.  15 Dec 1999

L&H Simply Translating 3.0

Simple by name, simple by nature. If all you want is the gist of a piece written in a foreign language, then this package is perfect. Just don't expect a polished translation.  01 Dec 1999

Mobile phones to come with built-in dictaphones

Mobile phones will soon be built with integrated dictaphones that can be used to send emails, among other things.  19 Nov 1999

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