Visteon and Lernout & Hauspie Announce Intent to Create a Joint Venture
12 April 2000
Visteon Corporation and Lernout & Hauspie Announce Their Intent to Create a Joint Venture to Develop Next Generation Speech-Enabled Solutions for the Automobile
DEARBORN, Mich. and BURLINGTON, Mass.--April 11, 2000--Leading Automotive Industry Supplier and L&H Plan to Pool Strengths
to Bring Voice Interface to Growing Speech for Automotive Market;
Plans to Focus on Automotive ISP Solutions and Services
Lernout & Hauspie (L&H) and Visteon Corporation today announced their intent to create a joint venture dedicated to advancing and accelerating the speech interface in automotive applications. This joint venture will include automotive Internet speech portal services and solutions. The venture plans to leverage L&H's full range of speech technologies and Visteon's expertise in automotive speech design and integration to develop voice-enabled solutions for automobile equipment manufacturers and the aftermarket.
L&H will have a 60 percent interest in the venture; Visteon will invest $20 million in the venture, giving it a 40 percent interest. The new company is expected to be jointly managed and draw talent from both Visteon and L&H(TM) resources. The purpose of the joint venture will be to provide a dedicated, single source of high-end, integrated speech products and technology dedicated to the automotive industry. The new joint venture is scheduled to be launched with fifty employees in mid-2000. This approach is intended to give the joint venture the tools needed to quickly come to market with the highest quality and most innovative industry solutions for customers.
Use of the speech interface in automotive devices eliminates the need to manually control many dashboard level instruments, fostering safety by allowing drivers to keep their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel. These benefits, coupled with the ease of use and convenience of a speech interface, are expected to accelerate speech recognition in the automotive market over the next few years.
"The voice user interface will be the primary way of interacting with devices in the automobile and controlling outside communications, particularly as features proliferate," noted William Meisel, president of TMA Associates, a speech industry market consulting firm in Tarzana, California. "The capability is already in a number of luxury cars, proving its feasibility, and it will eventually be a standard feature of all vehicles. In addition, there will be a significant upgrade market as drivers try to make the most of their driving time--both in terms of productivity and entertainment," Meisel added.
"L&H sees a tremendous opportunity in speech for the automotive market, particularly in the deployment of an Internet portal for automobiles. By leveraging our talent with Visteon's extensive automotive expertise and impressive global customer base, we can more quickly penetrate this market and capitalize on this rapidly growing opportunity," said Gaston Bastiaens, president and CEO of L&H. "This joint venture will be the industry's first entity to dedicate a full spectrum of speech technologies and talent exclusively to the development, design and implementation of speech for the automobile."
"This partnership with L&H elevates vehicle voice technology to the next level," said Peter Pestillo, Chairman and CEO, Visteon. "It allows us to accelerate voice technology integration into a wider range of complete vehicle systems. Visteon Voice Technology combined with L&H's speech and language solutions will provide our customers with leading edge voice-enabled solutions in vehicles today."
The joint venture is expected to further each company's prior independent efforts to create a wide range of speech enabled automotive solutions to meet the needs of all automobile product manufacturers, integrators and vehicle manufacturers worldwide. Future potential solutions from the joint venture include voice-activated access to dashboard devices such as audio systems, climate control systems, speech-only cell phones and voice-enabled navigation systems. It is also expected the joint venture will create a new automotive ISP focused on solutions and services capable of meeting the information needs of millions of customers. These solutions and services will allow users to access the Internet, conduct searches, make e-commerce transactions and retrieve information - all using conversational speech with support for a variety of languages.
About Visteon
Visteon Corporation is focused on becoming the world's leading consumer-focused, technology driven automotive systems company. Visteon has a wide array of product lines, which account for more than 40 percent of a vehicle's content. Visteon Corporation is recognized around the world for outstanding product quality, reliability and cost competitiveness, innovative solutions to customer needs, and corporate stewardship of the environment and community.
Visteon Corporation is a leading full-service supplier that delivers consumer-driven technology solutions to automotive manufacturers worldwide and through multiple channels within the global automotive aftermarket. Visteon has a global delivery system of more than 130 technical, manufacturing, sales and service facilities located in 23 countries. It has 81,000 employees working in three core business segments: Dynamics and Energy Conversion; Comfort, Communication and Safety; and Glass.
About Lernout & Hauspie
Lernout & Hauspie (L&H) is a global leader in advanced speech and language solutions for vertical markets, computers, automobiles, telecommunications, embedded products, consumer goods and the Internet. The company is making the speech user interface (SUI) the keystone of simple, convenient interaction between humans and technology, and is using advanced translation technology to break down language barriers. The company provides a wide range of offerings, including: customized solutions for corporations; core speech technologies marketed to OEMs; end user and retail applications for continuous speech products in horizontal and vertical markets; and document creation, human and machine translation services, Internet translation offerings, and linguistic tools. L&H's products and services originate in four basic areas: automatic speech recognition (ASR), text-to-speech (TTS), digital speech and music compression (SMC) and text-to-text (translation). For more information, please visit Lernout & Hauspie on the World Wide Web at www.lhs.com or www.lhsl.com.
This Press Release contains forward-looking information, including but not limited to statements involving the plans, expectations and intentions concerning the development and commercialization activities of joint venture. There can be no assurance that actual results will not be materially different than those anticipated in these forward-looking statements. Factors which could cause actual results to materially differ from those anticipated in these forward looking statements include known and unknown risks, including those set forth below. The start-up of the Joint Venture is subject to certain conditions including the negotiation and execution of the definitive agreement. As a result, there can be no assurance that the Joint Venture will be formed on terms described herein, if at all. Joint ventures also involve numerous risks, including difficulties associated with the assimilation of the joint venture partners' technology, conflicts of interest among the joint venture partners, and the ability of the joint venture partners to cooperate productively. In addition, the technologies and businesses of the Joint Venture are subject to the significant risks and uncertainties generally applicable to high technology companies, including uncertainty of new product development, budget overruns, project delays, early stage of development of the targeted markets, uncertainty of market growth, rapid technological change and intense competition. As a result, there can be no assurance that the Joint Venture will be successful. L&H cautions readers not to place undue reliance upon any such forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. L&H expressly disclaims any obligation or undertaking to release publicly any updates or revisions to any such statements to reflect any change in the L&H's expectations or any change in events, conditions or circumstance on which any such statement is based.