Apple nuance

Last November, the Western blogosphere discussed a comment from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, in past tense, that Apple had acquired voice recognition company Nuance .



Wozniak soon corrected himself by correcting his comment, and the public was already confident that a banal misunderstanding had occurred, during which Steve confused Nuance with another company - Siri , which was actually bought by Apple in April 2010



But as it turned out, Wozniak's comment, whether he knew about it or not, was not at all as erroneous as it seemed at first glance.

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Negotiations between Apple and Nuance, as it turned out, have been going on for several months already - numerous sources confirm this. What does it mean? In general, this may mean an attempt to buy a public company in your apple portfolio, but at the moment it is extremely unlikely. What is more possible is the partnership of two companies working on the following versions of iOS.



Actually, for those who follow the situation around the development of new versions of the Apple mobile operating system, all this hardly looks shocking news. But between all the discussions and rumors, a dead dog of truth was buried - as it turned out, Siri builds its products around Nuance technology. And although at first they used Vlingo , the final choice fell in the direction of Nuance for a number of reasons: both companies grow from the Stanford Research Institute, and Nuance is considered a leader in its field.



Why am I talking about this? It's simple. Siri technology promises to be an important part of the upcoming iOS 5. With some reservations, this means that Nuance technology will become part of the next version of iOS. The situation will change if Apple decides to use another option, but, again, Nuance is considered the best of all the available options. The only rival in this market is Google, but to go to them for advice, experts or technology ... you understand that this is from the category of fiction.



However, Apple always has another opportunity - to build the technology themselves. And the vacancies that appear periodically in Cupertino confirm such intentions. But, first, it will take a very, very long time to catch up with Nuance. But more importantly, and also known to every specialist in this industry, Nuance holds several key patents of its technology and very aggressively defends its rights to them. Even Apple would have to perform shamanic dances with a tambourine for a very long time in order to achieve this goal itself.



(A little digression: you might be wondering how did Google manage to develop its own voice recognition technology so quickly, although they were also bound by Nuance patents? Mike Cohen, co-founder of Nuance, who worked there 10 helped years and, later, gobbled up by Google. If someone knows how to swim in these waters, this person was him. They knew all that and it worked, so today Android proposes to perform some voice manipulations - the technology is still from perfection.)



So why would Apple not get hold of its fat wallet and simply not buy Nuance? First, the company is worth a lot of money. Nuance is traded on the stock exchange, and is now at a historic high. During the first Apple / Nuance negotiations, the company’s market value was estimated at $ 5 billion, today this figure is already at $ 6 billion. And, definitely, if you want to buy such a company, you can safely add another billion to its assessment.



Of course, as we all know, Apple has the money for such a purchase. About $ 60 billion is still in the company's accounts, which allows you to redeem the whole Nuance with the giblets several times in a row. It turned out that Nuance - very uncompromising sellers, and negotiations with them resemble a deal with the devil.



After the takeover of Siri, Apple had to communicate with all partners of the company in order to be sure that no agreements would be terminated, and the company would be able to continue its own activities normally. Almost with all partners, negotiations went without a hitch (for example, with OpenTable ), except for one. Guess what?



It is rumored that CEO Paul Nu Ricci (Paul Ricci) in its rigidity is no different from Steve Jobs. It is for this reason that negotiations between the two companies dragged on for months.



From what is known today, one thing is clear - Apple is considering absolutely all possibilities of cooperation with Nuance, including its takeover. But, I repeat, most likely only a license agreement will be concluded extending the rights of both companies. If Apple buys Nuance, then several customers of the latest company will immediately be cut off from its groundwork, which will undermine their position in the market. That, undoubtedly, is an advantage of Cupertino. Moreover, considering what they are developing at Google, the Federal Anti-Monopoly Commission would hardly have looked at Apple’s similar purchase.



In the event that such a deal happens, Apple will fulfill its very old dream: full control of the technologies used in their devices.



But those who are well aware of Apple in general, and Steve Jobs in particular, are well aware that they will be damned if they overpay even a cent for anything. And they would have to throw a very cool "cream" in the case of buying Nuance. Moreover, the funny thing is, this is a deal with a “cat in a bag” - most of Nuance’s capitalization comes from licenses that they issue to third parties, and if Apple buys the company, the license agreements will be canceled, which will collapse the capitalization inside, already, Apple and the shareholders of the company cannot afford this. A double-edged sword until Apple stops playing “volume” and starts making “strategy”.



Apple knows this perfectly well. Having concluded an extensive license agreement now, the company can buy time to quietly create its technology in the background - this has already happened in the story of Skyhook (Google also suffered a little in this history, and if you believe the rumors, it still suffers but we do not believe).



Regardless of Apple’s decisions, one thing is clear - Nuance needs an apple company to roll out iOS 5 in a planned way. The messages that come from the company's camp hint at the release sometime this fall, although the first conversations and discussions will most likely begin at WWDC next month. Rest assured, Apple will seek to address the situation with Nuance by this time.



The flip side of the coin is that, oddly enough, Apple needs Nuance. Not just because of the increasing pressure from Google. Nuance does not mean absolutely nothing without applications that use this technology, just like Siri. But most of these applications appear in one place. We will not guess, everything is clear: iOS.



Despite the fact that most Siri still seem to be a cool voice recognition service, this is not entirely true. Technically, this element stands at the end of the Nuance technology. And Siri is a company that makes cool products based on Nuance technology. The last company understands this very well and is already trying to enter this area, becoming more protected from the misfortunes of fate, the market and competitors. Therefore, it is not surprising that Nuance tried to buy Siri several times before Apple did it with lightning speed (obviously, by offering a good “fat”).



If you thought that at this stage Nuance lost to Siri - you were mistaken. In this area they say: “To make voice recognition qualitatively is a completely non-trivial task, because this is data entry. You either won or lost right away. ” Nuance won a long time ago.



Both companies need each other. Nuance - in Apple, and vice versa.



“I think that voice recognition will become an increasingly large part of these systems. Apple probably thinks the same way, ”Wozniak corrected himself after a time bomb flew out of his mouth. And it's silly to think that he is mistaken about Apple, in general, all the major market players today are guided by a similar logic.



Steve Wozniak either really made a reservation, or he knows a lot more than he usually says. Time will tell.



according to TechCrunch