(By Mani) Online retail giant Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) said it has acquired leading text-to-speech technology company Ivona Software.
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The acquisition is natural as Ivona's features were already deployed in Kindle Fire tablets, including Text-to-Speech, Voice Guide and Explore by Touch.
Additionally, Ivona delivers text-to-speech products and services for thousands of developers, businesses and customers around the world.
Ivona deal comes at a perfect time as Ivona's technology would be a best fit for Amazon, which has been rumored to launch a smartphone and upgrades to Kindle devices. Ivona offers voice and language portfolios with 44 voices in 17 languages and more in development.
Ivona's text-to-speech products have been recognized as industry leading in terms of natural voice quality, accuracy and ease of use. The Ivona suite includes a wide range of text-to-speech solutions for consumers, developers who want to incorporate text-to-speech into their user interfaces, and business customers from a variety of industries.