“Nuance Communications Inc. (NUAN), the U.S. maker of speech-recognition software, advanced the most in two years in Nasdaq trading on reports that Apple Inc. (AAPL) has held negotiations with the company,” Katie Hoffmann reports for Bloomberg.
“The companies are in talks about an acquisition, or, more likely, a partnership, TechCrunch reported May 6, citing several unidentified sources,” Hoffmann reports. “In November, speculation of a deal between the two surfaced after Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak said the company had bought Nuance. He later said he’d made a mistake.”
Hoffmann reports, “Nuance’s software could become part of the operating system that runs Apple’s devices such as the iPhone, TechCrunch said. Apple, which also makes the iPad, bought mobile-application developer Siri Inc. a year ago, gaining technology that lets users search the Web by talking to their phones. Siri has used Nuance’s speech recognition software for more than a year.”
Read more in the full article here.
Related articles:
Apple may be negotiating deal with Nuance for iOS 5 speech recognition – May 7, 2011
RUMOR: Apple’s iOS 5 to deeply integrate Siri’s artificial intelligence and assistance technology – March 29, 2011
Join the dots on six future Apple technologies – September 22, 2010
The story of Siri from birth to acquisition by Apple – June 14, 2010
Apple buys virtual personal assistant startup Siri; deal ratchets up competition with Google – April 28, 2010
Cool. I loved playing with Voice Recognition and Speech Commands back in Mac OS X Tiger. But these feature seem dated now, since they have not improved much in many years. Hopefully expertise from Nuance will Apple them update this cool technology.
Unless he was an “authorized” leak, Woz needs to exert a little caution when speaking before deals are “done” – zip the lip.
Can you imagine a Watson-grade voice capability built into OS X and iOS?
Talk about a sea change.
The stuff of SciFi.