LAKE FOREST, Calif.,
April 1, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Voice
Assist, Inc. (OTCBB:VSST), a leading developer of hosted speech
services and voice "in-application" technology, today announced
financial results for the period ending December 31, 2010 and provided a review of
business activities for the first quarter of 2011.
Michael Metcalf, Voice Assist
Chairman and CEO, commented, "The last several months have been
momentous for Voice Assist, as we recruited a team of proven
industry leaders, established initial commercial relationships and
began what will be an aggressive rollout of our technology through
a robust and diversified distribution program. Partnerships with
Jabra and Salesforce.com's Chatter expose our state-of-the-art
hosted speech platform to a large and ideally suited target
audience, and provide immediate credibility to benefit future
alliances. Though only recently launched, these agreements have led
directly to new subscribers since January 1,
2011 and provide the foundation for expected growth during
2011. Our pipeline for additional collaborative opportunities is
robust, both in terms of quantity and quality. Our optimism for the
future has never been higher."
Recent Highlights
- Voice Assist partnered with Jabra, a brand owned by GN Netcom,
a world leader in innovative headset solutions. Voice Assist will
provide complete hands-free solutions, combining Voice Assist
cloud-based speech services and Jabra hands-free devices, enabling
users to increase productivity using any mobile phone or
IP-connected device (such as the iPhone, Blackberry, Android
phones, the iPad® and other tablets).
- Voice Assist was selected by Mobile Direct Response (MDR) to
develop and host its speech recognition advertising campaign tool.
By utilizing the Voice Assist platform, MDR provides its customers
with an easy way to implement marketing and advertising campaigns
across major wireless carriers.
- The Company announced commercial release of Voice Assist
Standard that allows consumers to text by voice from any phone or
device to any phone or wireless connected device, even mobile
phones without a text plan.
- Voice Assist significantly strengthened its management team and
board of directors. Key additions include:
- Randy Granovetter was named
President and elected to the board of directors. Ms. Granovetter
has over 30 years experience in wireless and unified
communications. She was the founder and CEO of Jabra Corporation
(acquired by GN Netcom). In addition, she served in various
management capacities at Microsoft as well as serving as Vice
President for QUALCOMM's Internet Services (QIS).
- Scott Fox was also elected as an
independent director. Mr. Fox has over 30 years of experience in
the telecommunications industry, serving as the Chairman and CEO of
Global View Partners, a strategic investment, mergers and
acquisitions, and strategic consulting company and is also the
Chairman of Cenoplex, a company providing innovative services to
the wireless industry. Previously, Mr. Fox was the Chairman of the
Board of the global GSM Association and also spent five years as
Vice President Strategy and Chief Technology Officer for BellSouth,
the predecessor to Cingular Wireless/AT&T.
- Michael Silva, Chief Financial
Officer - Mr. Silva brings over 20 years experience in the speech
technology, mobile and wireless industry to the Company. He was the
former CFO of Voice Processing Corporation and also served as vice
president of strategy for Jabra prior to its acquisition by GN
Netcom.
- Vic Boyd, Chief Information
Officer - Mr. Boyd has been supporting global enterprise voice and
data infrastructure for the past 17 years. He consulted for
SpeechPhone, LLC and was responsible for developing, coordinating,
and implementing the voice and data infrastructure to support users
throughout the U.S. and multiple foreign countries. Mr. Boyd has
consulted for dozens of public and private Fortune 1000 companies
in the U.S. and abroad, including AT&T, SBC, Avaya, Level3,
MCI, WorldCom, and UUnet among others.
- Tracy Roberts, Chief Product
Officer - Ms. Roberts brings over 25 years of experience in
delivering innovative products and services in key industries such
as speech technology, mobile products and services, web services
and unified communication solutions. She also led product
development at SpeechPhone, LLC.
- Andrew Fox, Vice President,
Developer Partnerships and Programs - Mr. Fox brings over 15 years
of experience to Voice Assist. Previously, Mr. Fox worked for
RealNetworks as its Senior Marketing Manager.
- Robb Cason, Vice President of
Enterprise Sales - Mr. Cason brings more than 25 years of
experience in direct sales, channel sales, and business development
for high-tech and communication services firms. Mr. Cason served as
vice president of business development and strategy at InterCall,
Inc. Prior, he was at Microsoft where he led a team that enabled
strategic partners MCI, British Telecom, and InterCall to achieve
greater than 100% year-over-year growth in Live Meeting revenue.
- Lisa Porter, Vice President,
Marketing and Communications - Ms. Porter has 20-plus years of
experience in the wireless industry in marketing and
communications, public relations, product and sales marketing and
support. She was president and co-founder of Porter Creative Group,
Inc., a high technology public relations agency servicing clients
in the wireless, semiconductor and other high technology segments.
She was also Vice President of Marketing and International Sales at
Jabra.
"Voice Assist now has the proven team in place and important
initial agreements formed, which will enable us to aggressively
grow during 2011 and beyond," said Ms. Granovetter, Voice Assist's
president. "We are working closely with Jabra and Salesforce.com to
increase the utilization of our hands-free technology and to better
integrate our platform into the offerings of our partners. The
traffic at our booth at the CTIA Wireless 2011 conference in
Orlando, Florida was brisk, and we
met with key industry analysts as well as trade press. In addition,
we had several positive meetings with companies looking to partner
with Voice Assist so as to voice-enable their products, create
bundles or collaborate in other ways. The excitement is building.
Hands-free communication is no longer a thing of the future. Voice
Assist has made it possible today, and we expect to benefit from
the increasing attention on avoiding distracted driving and the
need to access applications in the cloud quickly, intuitively and
on-the-go."
2010 Financial Results
Voice Assist revenues for the year ended December 31, 2010 increased 59% to $1.25 million compared to $791,000 for the year ended December 31, 2009. Gross margin for the year
ended December 31, 2010 was 73.4%
compared to 52.6% for the year ended December 31, 2009. Operating expenses for the
year ended December 31, 2010 was
$2.0 million compared to $929,000 for the year ended December 31, 2009. Operating loss for the year
ended December 31, 2010 was
$(1.1) million compared to
$(513,000) for the year ended
December 31, 2009. Net loss for the
year ended December 31, 2010 was
$(1.3) million compared to
$(748,000) for the year ended
December 31, 2009.
The Company had $616,000 in cash
and cash equivalents and $310,000 in
Shareholders' equity as of December 31,
2010.
On March 31, 2011, Voice Assist
filed its Form 10-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
This filing includes detailed financial tables and management's
commentary.
About Voice Assist, Inc.
Headquartered in Lake Forest,
Calif., Voice Assist is a hosted and speech services company
that enables voice in any application, network and device.
The company's cloud-based speech platform eliminates the need
to use a keyboard or keypad to interact, and enables users to
communicate, connect or transact using any application on any phone
or other communication device. The Voice Assist platform
includes a fast and safe way to make calls, manage your e-mails,
send text messages and post to social networks such as Facebook and
Twitter by voice commands and provides a scalable solution for
developers to add voice to any application. For more
information on the company, visit www.voiceassist.com.
Forward-Looking Statement:
Forward-Looking Statement: Statements involve risks and
uncertainties, including, but not limited to, our ability to retain
the executives, our ability to generate "an aggressive rollout of
our technology through a robust distribution program," the
continued ownership and operation of the company, functionality of
our technology, and any other difficulties related to risks and
effects of legal and administrative proceedings and governmental
regulation, future financial and operational results, including our
expected growth during 2011, competition, general economic
conditions, and the ability to manage and continue growth.
Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize,
or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual outcomes
may vary materially from those indicated. Important factors that
could cause actual results to differ materially from the
forward-looking statements we make in this news release include
market conditions and those set forth in reports or documents we
file from time to time with the SEC. We undertake no obligation to
revise or update such statements to reflect current events or
circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of
unanticipated events.
Contacts:
Voice Assist, Inc.
Lisa Porter
949-655-1696
lisa@voiceassist.com
Investors:
Brett Maas
Hayden IR
646-536-7331
brett@haydenir.com
SOURCE Voice Assist, Inc.