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Spinvox, the London company that lets you translate your voice into text messages, could announce its sale as soon as today, according to a source close to the company who requested anonymity.<\/p>\n
We’ve called Spinvox for official comment. We reached Simon Crowfoot, the company’s strategic business development director, but he said he was unaware of any details, and referred us to the company’s chief executive, who has not yet responded.<\/p>\n
The rumored sale comes at a time when the company is struggling for survival, and as a chorus of competitors surround it.<\/p>\n
Rumors of Spinvox sale first arose earlier this month — when it leaked that the company was in negotiations with the Burlington, Mass., based speech-recognition giant Nuance Communications. Spinvox needs to find some sort of exit of its financial predicament: It owes $47 million (\u00a330 million) in debt to one of its investors, which was due to be paid back earlier this month. The company got a reprieve on that commitment until the end of January, and earlier rumors had suggested the company was trying to announce a sale by Christmas. <\/p>\n
In its story two weeks ago, London’s Sunday Times had said the company was looking to sell to Nuance for about $150 million (or \u00a392m)<\/a>. But it’s possible that Nuance has dragged out the talks, in order to push for a lower price. After all, that’s a high price to pay for a company that is still losing money, is reportedly only making only $7 million in revenue, and has run out of cash reserves. BBC reported that Nuance is interested in the Spinvox’s contracts with a international telecoms operators, such as Telefonica in South America and Telstra of Australia.<\/p>\n