# Amazon has purchased Ivona



## Jesslyn (Oct 29, 2008)

The text to speech company, we're going to get some great TTS one day.

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-news&nyo=0

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 2


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## Jesslyn (Oct 29, 2008)

Text of release

http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1777642&highlight=

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 24, 2013-- (NASDAQ:AMZN)-Amazon.com, Inc. today announced that it has acquired leading text-to-speech technology company IVONA Software. IVONA delivers world-class technologies that power the "Text-to-Speech," "Voice Guide" and "Explore by Touch" features on Kindle Fire tablets. Additionally, IVONA delivers text-to-speech products and services for thousands of developers, businesses and customers around the world.

"IVONA's exceptional text-to-speech technology leads the industry in natural voice quality, accuracy and ease of use. IVONA is already instrumental in helping us deliver excellent accessibility features on Kindle Fire, including Text-to-Speech, Voice Guide and Explore by Touch," said Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. "The IVONA team shares our passion for innovation and customer obsession, and we look forward to building great products to deliver world-class voice solutions to customers around the world."

"For more than ten years, the IVONA team has been focused on creating innovative text-to-speech technologies," said Lukasz Osowski, CEO and co-founder of IVONA. "We are all thrilled that Amazon is supporting our growth so that we can continue to innovate and deliver exceptional voice and language support for our customers."

IVONA offers voice and language portfolios with 44 voices in 17 languages and more in development.

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I use Ivona on my other Android devices and the TTS is exceptional.


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## cleee (May 15, 2009)

I really hope that there is an update at some point for the Fire that allows you to switch between a male and female voice for the TTS.


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## Ann in Arlington (Oct 27, 2008)

cleee said:


> I really hope that there is an update at some point for the Fire that allows you to switch between a male and female voice for the TTS.


I could get behind that. I really don't care about TTS, but I rather think I'd use it more if it was a male voice. At least it'd be nice to have the choice.


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## Jesslyn (Oct 29, 2008)

cleee said:


> I really hope that there is an update at some point for the Fire that allows you to switch between a male and female voice for the TTS.


Yeah....Its a bit janky that they took the TTS off the PW and put on the Fire only to do in a half-assed manner. Once was all I needed to determine that I would just still with my Kindle Touch. No TTS is the only reason that--drumroll please--for the 1st time since the K1, I didn't upgrade to the latest Kindle. I commute every day and need that robotic, little man to read to me on my daily drive.

Now that they've purchase Ivona, I see why they didn't want to 'waste' any money porting over the old software. I fully expect that the next version of the Kindle will have a much improved TTS engine. Now if we could only get them to buy SwiftKey......


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## Toby (Nov 25, 2008)

What's SwiftKey?


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## Jesslyn (Oct 29, 2008)

Toby said:


> What's SwiftKey?


It's a keyboard application. I really dislike the keyboard on the Fire when compared to other keyboards that you can install for Android devices. The stock keyboard on my Note is a great example.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy Note 2


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