Nuance is picking up another company today, acquiring SVOX, a company that developers voice recognition software for in-car systems and consumer electronics. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Nuance, which also develops imaging and voice recognition technologies, is using the acquisition to enter the automotive industry. As the company says in the release, consumers are using speech recognition to access mobile Web content, find local businesses, get directions, and create and listen to messages.
The combination of Nuance’s and SVOX’s technology will help automakers integrate this functionality in cars.
Nuance also announced that it closed its $157 million acquisition of print management and cost recovery software developer Equitrac.
The fact that Nuance is making a few serious acquisitions isn’t surprising. The company has a market cap os $6 billion and also may have some key partners as well. Apple appears to be licensing Nuance’s technology in OS X Lion. And we heard that Nuance was in negotiations with Apple for a partnership to license and use the company’s voice recognition technology, though Nuance was missing from the lineup of products revealed last week’s WWDC conference. And we’ve learned that Apple may already be using Nuance technology in their new massive data center in North Carolina.