Amazon continues to take giant steps to strengthen and enrich the range of services on its family tablets Kindle Fire and little by little it is incorporating elements that take it to the level of the two “massive” platforms in the sector, Android y Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC),. The last great novelty in this regard is the purchase of IVONA, a company specialized in systems text-to-speech (text-to-speech) with which the leading e-commerce firm will seek to define its own alternative to Crab y Google Now.
It seems that the good results obtained with your device Kindle Fire HD they are motivating Amazon to reinforce some basic points of its ecosystem and its own line of services. Although today personal assistants do not have the sufficient level of development to become the true virtual companion that the main companies in the sector want them to be, investments in this field represent a commitment to the future, and who knows if in a Not too long ago, we can even stop using our fingers regularly to communicate with our devices.
Amazon has not wanted to be left behind in this area and has bought IVONA, as reported by Android Community, quite possibly with the goal of developing your own voice assistant. In fact, IVONA is already behind the text-to-speech that is currently integrated into the Kindle y Kindle Fire and that they serve to read us the text of our electronic books aloud, although as you know the functions of this software are still quite far from what Crab o Google Now can offer the user.
However, what is important is not what IVONA can do now, but what can be built from its extensive portfolio with 44 different types of voices 17 different languages (and growing). Still we will have to wait to see what exactly Amazon it is brought in with the purchase of control over this software, more focused, originally, on reinforcing the skills of people with some type of disability or visual impairment. In any case, the possibilities of finding more “hands-free” options in the next generations of the Kindle Fire HD (and who knows if in a future smartphone), without a doubt, they have risen with this acquisition.