SpinVox, the voice to text messaging provider, is rolling out across 12 more countries in Telefónica’s network across Latin America. The move follows the October 2008 launch with Telefónica’s Movistar Chile.
The countries include Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela, as well as Vivo, Telefónica’s joint venture with Portugal Telecom in Brazil.
Currently SpinVox is the only speech to text service in the world available in six languages – Spanish, English, French, German, Portuguese and Italian. But although it does have competitors (of a sort) such as Jott, PhoneTag, and TwitterFone, none have signed so many big mobile network deals.
Interestingly, Spinvox recently released an API which is getting lots of traction. Quick VoicePro is an iPhone app which converts your voice notes to text using the API, but “a stream of new applications” are expected to launch over the coming months in different mobile platforms. Registrations for the SpinVox API now over 520 and the API now works in English, French, Spanish and German.
Out of the competitors, Seattle based Jott offers a service that lets users speak messages; those can be sent to themselves or others as transcribed emails or voice messages.
PhoneTag is a voice to text service which converts voicemail into text messages and then sends them directly to your mobile phone or email. It has deals with networks including AT&T, Alltell, Sprint, Skype, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Virgin.
Skydeck is a similar service but actually uses SpinVox for the text conversion.
TwitterFone is free service that lets you update your Twitter feed using your voice, powered by dial2do. OK, it’s only 140 charcters conversion, but hey, who’s counting.