Motorola, Lexicus Division Licenses Chinese Speech Technology to Lernout & Hauspie
PALO ALTO, Calif. — June 8, 1998 — Motorola, Lexicus Division (NYSE:MOT) announced today an agreement to license its Chinese speech technology to Lernout & Hauspie (L&H)(NASDAQ:LHSPF) (EASDAQ:LHSP.ED). The agreement follows a March 12, 1998 licensing agreement in which Motorola, Lexicus Division obtained a license of L&H's automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), speech and music compression (SMC) technologies. The joint effort between Motorola and L&H promises to broaden the market of quality speech recognition products worldwide, and, in particular, in the Asia Pacific region. A leader in speech recognition technology, Motorola, Lexicus Division won the 1996 BYTE best new technology award at COMDEX for its breakthrough in continuous Chinese speech recognition.
L&H will utilize Chinese speech technology components and data from Motorola, Lexicus Division, to build Chinese dictation engines. As a worldwide market leader in speech and linguistic technologies, products and services, L&H will create complimentary speech recognition products, which, through Motorola's distribution services, will expand L&H's reach. Commenting on the licensing agreement, Gaston Bastiaens, president and CEO of Lernout & Hauspie, said, "Once again, Motorola, Lexicus Division and L&H have demonstrated our intention to drive the adoption of L&H's advanced speech technologies in fast-growing markets. Today's agreement enhances L&H's position by greatly expanding our language capabilities to include the complex Chinese language.
With this capability, L&H is now positioned to introduce its products into many countries in the Asia Pacific region of the world." "We are pleased to assist L&H as they develop complimentary speech recognition technologies for the Asian market," said Ronjon Nag, vice president of Motorola Inc. and general manager of its Lexicus Division.
"It is our hope to provide L&H with distribution services and to assist L&H in introducing its products to the Chinese speaking world."
About Lernout & Hauspie
Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products (L&H) is an international leader in the development of advanced speech technology for various commercial applications and products. The company is divided into four divisions: core technologies; dictation, a division dedicated to discrete and continuous speech offerings; translation services and products; and Internet services. Its four core technologies are automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), digital speech compression and text-to-text (translation). Lernout & Hauspie can be found on the World Wide Web at www.lhs.com.
About Motorola, Lexicus Division
Motorola, Lexicus Division is one of the world's leading providers of handwriting and speech recognition software for desktop, mobile and embedded systems. Its products include cursive and print recognizers for English and Chinese, and noise-robust DSP-based speech recognition subsystems. Motorola is one of the world's leading providers of wireless communications, semiconductors, and advanced electronic systems and services. Motorola's 1997 sales were $ 29.8 billion.
Motorola and the Motorola logo are registered trademarks of Motorola, Inc. All Lernout & Hauspie product names and trademarks mentioned herein are trademarks of L&H and their respective subsidiaries. All other company and product names are trademarks of their respective companies.
CONTACT:
Motorola
Robin Jones-Mendoza, 650/858-6159
[email protected]
http://www.mot.com/lexicus/
or
Lernout & Hauspie
Ellen Spooren, 781/203-5344 (IR)
[email protected]
Audrey Pobre, 781/203-5341 (PR)
[email protected]
http://www.lhs.com