Neil Hughes
Nuance Communications, the voice recognition company whose technology helps to power Apple's Siri personal assistant, is said to be exploring a sale of the company, with Apple rival Samsung allegedly a potential suitor.
Nuance's apparent interest in a sale was first revealed on Monday by The Wall Street Journal, which cited unnamed sources. Nuance is based in Burlington, Mass., and licenses its voice recognition technology to a number of major companies, chief among them Samsung and Apple.
Though the partnership between Nuance and Apple was long assumed, the company officially confirmed last year that its technology helps to power Siri, which is found on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Nuance CEO Paul Ricci revealed that his company's technology is "the fundamental provider of voice recognition for Apple."
Some industry watchers and investors have suggested that Apple should make a play to buy Nuance and own the technology behind Siri while cutting out competitors like Samsung or the Google Now service found in Android. Last year, investors speculated that Apple could acquire Nuance for $7 billion — a price well beyond anything Apple has ever spent on an acquisition.
Of course, Apple recently did join the billion-dollar-acquisition club with its blockbuster $3 billion buyout of Beats, which was confirmed last month.
Nuance's technology does not handle Siri's artificial intelligence layers. Instead, the company's products simply provides the capability of Siri, or other voice-driven services, to interpret a user's voice. That data must then be contextually deciphered to provide the kind of humanized response a user expects.
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98 Comments
[quote name="AppleInsider" url="/t/180729/apple-partner-nuance-exploring-sale-reportedly-in-talks-with-samsung#post_2550997"]Nuance Communications, the voice recognition company whose technology helps to power Apple's Siri personal assistant, is said to be exploring a sale of the company, with Apple rival Samsung allegedly a potential suitor. Some industry watchers and investors have suggested that Apple should make a play to buy Nuance and own the technology behind Siri while cutting out competitors like Samsung or [B]the Google Now service found in Android. [/B][/quote] Google doesn't use Nuance for any of their products including Google Now as far as I know. As for the rest of the story it reads to me as Nuance possibly floating the idea of a sale just to see how much they might be worth with no actual plan to follow thru at the moment.
I recommend Apple immediately buy IBM. Replace Siri with Watson and rename it "Steve". In an unrelated story, the [URL=http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/16/5814712/government-wants-to-regulate-smartphone-navigation-apps]US Transportation Department wants to regulate navigation apps[/URL]... They are probably losing so much of their traffic ticket money that they want to remove the ability for users to indicate where the police are located.
This is just so they can weedle more money out of Apple when the latter inevitably purchases them.
Even though Siri apparently uses Nuance only for voice recognition and not for AI, it seems to me that this would have been a more important strategic and defensive acquisition than Beats was.
[quote name="zoetmb" url="/t/180729/apple-partner-nuance-exploring-sale-reportedly-in-talks-with-samsung#post_2551009"]Even though Siri apparently uses Nuance only for voice recognition and not for AI, it seems to me that this would have been a more important strategic and defensive acquisition than Beats was. [/quote] To some one out of the loop you are right, however I gave up thinking I was smarter than Apple a long time ago.