It’s obvious how Samsung could benefit from Innoetics technology and expertise, but the company hasn’t talked about what its intentions are yet. Samsung has confirmed the acquisition, and said only that Innoetics technologies, “present an opportunity to strengthen Samsung’s capabilities,” in a statement to Techcrunch.
Innoetics, which is based in Greece, hasn’t worked on apps or consumer projects before, and has instead collaborated with local carriers and companies such as Duolingo. Following the acquisition it will end its current services and “focus on further developing the technology it has planned and developed so far,” according to co-founder Emilios Halamandaris, speaking to local newspaper Ekathimerini. The same publication quotes anonymous sources saying the voice technology will be used by Samsung to challenge Apple and Google, further suggesting it will become part of the Bixby virtual assistant.
We can see a hint of Innoetics ambitions in this area from a blog post the company published at the end of 2016, saying it was working on the most advanced synthetic voices it had ever designed, which were ideal for digital assistants due to the human-like tone, and ability to give the assistant a unique character. Apple and Amazon have already achieved this, with recognizable voices and mannerisms for Siri and Alexa. Samsung will want to do the same with Bixby.
