iOS Speech Recognition Settings Confirm Nuance-Apple Partnership

Interesting post @ http://www.macrumors.com/2011/06/11/ios-speech-recognition-settings-confirm-nuance-apple-partnership/









A couple of screenshots posted on Twitter by @ChronicWire reveals hidden Nuance preferences found in the latest internal iOS builds that confirms that Apple has been actively working on building in speech recognition into iOS.

Rumors of a Nuance-Apple partnership had been heavy in the weeks prior to WWDC, though no announcements were made during the keynote. Later, comments by Robert Scoble indicated that the deals were simply not completed in time for WWDC but were still in the works:

I was told weeks ago by my source (same one who told me Twitter would be integrated deeply into the OS) that Siri wouldn't be done in time. Maybe for this fall's release of iPhone 5? After all, they need to have some fun things to demo for us in August, no?

The source of the screenshots (@Chronic / @SonnyDickson) has been known to have legitimate sources in the past. So, it seems certain that Apple is actively working on bringing Nuance speech recognition into iOS, perhaps as early as iOS 5 this fall.

Again: Nuance Slaps Vlingo With Another Patent Lawsuit Over Voice Recognition Technology

I guess Nuance is trying again to acquire Vlingo (given its standard sue before acquire strategy).

See below from Techcrunch: http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/09/nuance-sues-vlingo-again-over-voice-recognition-patents/#comments


Well, this is interesting. Nuance, a company that develops imaging and voice recognition technologies, is once again suing competitor Vlingo, which also develops a voice search technology and is backed by Yahoo, AT&T and Charles River Ventures.
According to the suit, which we’ve embedded below, Nuance claims Vlingo is infringing on number of Nuance’s patents including U.S. patent no. 6,487,534 B1, which relates to a “Distributed Client-Server Speech Recognition System.” By making, using, selling, offering to sell, and or importing its products and services related to speech recognition, Nuance says Vlingo is infringing on its patent.
Nuance is also claiming that Vlingo is infringing on that U.S. patent no. 6,785,653 B1, which is titled “Distributed Voice Web Architecture and Associated Components and Methods,” U.S. patent no. 6,839,669 B1, titled “Performing Actions Identified in Recognized Speech;” U.S. patent number No. 7,058,573 B1, titled “Speech Recognition System to Selectively Utilize Different Speech Recognition Techniques Over Multiple Speech Recognition Passes;” and U.S. patent no. 7,127,393 B2, titled “Dynamic Semantic Control of a Speech Recognition System.”
Nuance is requesting that Vlingo pay damages for infringing and profiting off the patents, but it’s unclear what the dollar amount of these damages are.
The two companies have a bit of a storied past. Nuance slapped Vlingo with a patent lawsuit back in 2008. Vlingo then bought a number of patents last year relating to voice and speech recognition, that aimed to force Nuance to drop its suit.
Dave Grannan, CEO of Vlingo, recently compared the act of competing with Nuance to
“having a venereal disease that’s in remission.” He tells Bloomberg BusinessWeek, “We crush them whenever we go head-to-head with them. But just when you’re thinking life is great – boom, there’s a sore on your lip.” Gross.
Nuance is a massive company with a $6 billion market cap and is a formidable competitor. In fact, 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 this 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.
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