SpinVox Looks to Portugal, Brazil, and Italy with API

SpinVox, a mobile voice-to-text provider, is aiming its applications programming interface (API) at Italy, Portugal, and Brazil with the launch of Italian and Portuguese support.

The move bolsters SpinVox’s API portfolio of languages from its English, Spanish, German, and French versions. According to the company, this recent expansion was the result of increased demand from within the Italian- and Portuguese-speaking markets.

“Italy has a very vibrant software and applications development sector,” writes Jonathan Simnett, global director of communications for SpinVox in an email to Speech Technology. “Our carrier rollout with Telefonica Latin America including their joint venture with Portuguese telecom Vivo has meant that we've been getting a lot of interest from Brazil, in particular, which is similarly advanced.”

“Clearly Brazil is a powerful, new, emerging economy, so it makes sense for SpinVox to be available to developers there as well,” he adds.

SpinVox’s new releases follow a recent pattern emerging among some speech providers to push into smaller and developing markets. The past month has seen other firms releasing solutions in Norway, Greece, and the Middle East, with language packs aimed at picking up gains in less crowded market spaces. Some have speculated that this is necessitated by the current economic recession, which has cut into companies’ traditional revenue streams and forced them to look elsewhere.

SpinVox’s finances, which are fueled by $200 million in venture capital, have come under scrutiny from a number of British-based media outlets. A BBC article in late July reported that SpinVox was encouraging employees to take optional pay in stock options, and that the agent-staffed centers that support its automated system were “a huge financial burden on the business.”

Daniel Doulton, SpinVox’s co-founder, however, maintained to the BBC that despite some troubles, the firm is currently operating profitably.

“SpinVox has just received a new funding round of in excess of [$25 million], and is continuing to grow fast to meet demand,” writes Simnett. “Given the multimillion dollar investment we have put into SpinVox VMCS…it makes sense for SpinVox to collaborate with third parties using the API to foster further innovations in voice and develop new revenue streams which are complementary to those we derive from our carrier and enterprise partnerships.”