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Will Apple Lose Siri's Core Tech To Samsung?
An anonymous reader writes Apple bought Siri in 2010, but its core technology is owned by Nuance, maker of Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Now Samsung is looking to buy Nuance. From the article: "This past June, Nuance and Samsung began merger talks, but nothing came of it. At the time, the two companies said talks had 'slowed' due to 'complexities.' But they didn't say it was dead. Guess what? The talks are back on. The first hint came in June, after the company missed the quarterly projections. The Wall Street Journal then brought up the talks with Samsung and also noted the company had taken financial steps that could indicate a buyout was imminent. The company’s earnings report for June stated that Nuance was redeeming $250 million in 2027 convertible notes. By calling back the debt, that would save the future acquirer around $50 million from a debt-to-share conversion."
Just like Samsung would never stop selling chips and screens to Apple. Oh wait.
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An ancient Samsung flip-phone I had, gosh, 10 years ago maybe, had a sort of rudimentary voice command operation powered by Nuance. Between that and other similar things Samsung has done, they were working with Nuance long before SRI and Siri came along.
Rather than being something to damage Apple, I would say the current idea of buying them probably has more to do with "OK Google" now being mandated on devices, which in turn cuts Samsung and Nuance out of the game. I am not sure what buying Nuance is supposed to do but it has to be a defense of some sort.
Sig for hire.
They only use the RealSpeak TTS (text to speech) engine... . This is really a non story because they can easily switch to another TTS vendor. The only possible impact is that siri would sound different... .
Disclaimer: I'm a developer that worked for Lernout and Hauspie that originally developed the ASR/TTS engine that have been sold to Scansoft/Nuance.
PS: Good luck for Samsung because when we bought certain American companies that also did Pentagon contract work, some Americans weren't that happy about it. I'm even personally convinced that they had some hands in the rapid downfall of Lernout and Hauspie.