Nuance acquires Mac voice software company
Nuance Communications buys MacSpeech business in attempt to bring Nuance's Dragon voice dictation software brand to the growing Mac market.
Nuance Communications announced Tuesday that it has bought MacSpeech, a company that provides voice dictation and recognition software for Mac users.
Seeing MacSpeech's experience with the Macintosh environment and its users, Nuance sought out the acquisition as a key opportunity to expand into the ever-growing Mac market. The company said it plans to bring its Dragon name, recognition, marketing, and R&D to the MacSpeech line of products to further grow their market share among Mac users. MacSpeech already licenses the Dragon speech technology engine for its MacSpeech Dictate software.
"We have heard from our customers--and from the Mac community at large--for years that they want Dragon for the Mac environment," said Peter Mahoney, Nuance's senior vice president and general manager for Dragon, in a statement. "In 2008, MacSpeech licensed our underlying Dragon dictation technology to deliver MacSpeech Dictate, and the demand has only continued to grow, fueled recently by our recent launch of Dragon Dictation for the iPhone."
Since buying IBM's Via Voice product in 2003, Nuance has enjoyed a virtual lock on the voice dictation business for Windows users. The company recently ventured into the mobile market by releasing Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search for iPhone users.