Nuance Communications: Sell off creates golden buying opportunity - FBR FBR notes that shares of NUAN are down roughly 20% since the co announced its equity offering in mid Dec.

Actually, there is a company already giving dads, grads, and everyone in between the ability to command and control a variety of devices with the spoken word: Motley Fool Hidden Gems recommendation Nuance Communications (Nasdaq: NUAN). And while spouse control is more fantasy than reality at this point, consumers can use their voices to input computer data, make calls on cellular phones, and call ahead for seafood from their cars -- all thanks to Nuance.

Nuance Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUAN) today announced that Nuance® speech solutions are being shipped within Ford SYNC™ for twelve Ford, Lincoln and Mercury models for 2008. SYNC, a new factory-installed, in-car communications and entertainment system, is designed to change the way consumers use digital media portable music players and mobile phones in their vehicles.

Nuance Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUAN), a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions, today announced that the Dubai Municipality is using Nuance speech recognition and speaker verification solutions to automate and optimize the procedure for reporting environment-related offenses in Dubai. Designed and deployed by Emerging Technologies, the new service will enable Dubai Municipality enforcement officers to quickly and conveniently capture and communicate an offender's details, reducing the time between the offence being committed and a fine being issued.

Nuance Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUAN), a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions, today announced that Ford Motor Company integrates Nuance speech technologies to provide drivers with unrivaled levels of safety and convenience when using the car's phone, navigation and entertainment systems. Nuance VoCon® speech recognition and RealSpeakTM Text-to-Speech technologies will be available across Europe for the Ford C-MAX and Ford Focus starting in December, followed later by the Ford Galaxy, Ford Mondeo and Ford S-MAX.

Dragon said that in an effort to boost efficiency and keep pace with an ever-increasing workload, the FBI will make Dragon NaturallySpeaking Legal available to agents and professional support staff across the organization, enabling them to create comprehensive reports, interviews, and other documents by voice, increasing productivity by three times over manual typing.

Speech and imaging software company Nuance Communications Inc. said Tuesday it bought medical imaging software maker Commissure Inc.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

Nuance said the purchase will help it speed sales growth through its software-as-a-service product offerings.

The company said the Commissure acquisition includes a suite of diagnostic exam software products, as well as an exclusive technology license deal with Massachusetts General Hospital.

Under the deal, Nuance will grant 217,975 shares of common stock as stand-alone restricted stock units to 21 Commissure employees that will join Nuance. Nuance said 50,250 of the units vest over four years and the rest vest over three years.

Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN), a leading provider of speech and imaging solutions, today announced that it has provided Telenor, Norway's largest telecommunications company, with customer care solutions that are uniquely powered by speech.
With Nuance® speech solutions, Telenor's self-service system allows customers to describe their needs in their own words and move directly to their destination, resulting in increased customer satisfaction by addressing the callers' desire to access information quickly instead of via a menu hierarchy.

Now in its ninth year, the event brings together leading companies and speech experts from around the globe, enabling peers to share ideas and best practices for launching effective speech services for both customer care and mobile applications. The conference features four customer care tracks focused on helping organizations support, communicate with and understand their customers, as well as two mobile tracks to present the various solutions that are revolutionizing the mobile user interface for operators, handset manufacturers and mobile content providers. A common theme of "What's Next" unifies the content that will be presented across the two co-located events.

It took a few minutes to sink in, but I realized yesterday that it's been an awfully long time since Motley Fool Hidden Gems recommendation Nuance Communications (Nasdaq: NUAN) bought another company. The speech specialist and serial-acquirer usually has its integration team very busy juggling at least a few integrations at a time.

They are the two defining innovations of the information age, yet thus far mobile telephony and the Internet have remained almost entirely separate. However, the growing sophistication of voice recognition technology may bring about this oft-heralded union.

It is 10 years since Dragon first brought speech recognition to the PC desktop and voice control still has a reputation for being unreliable and inaccurate.

After Microsoft's massive entrance in the speech industry, it's Google's turn to step in. Will they be the next to make a big acquisition in the Speech industry? We'll have to stay tuned to find out.

Just read about the newest thing in Google Labs: Goog411. A new free, ad-supported, 411 number you can call to get information on any business. Much like the one that Jingle has, and AT&T. I'd be curious to know who's reco engine is under the hood of that baby. It really akes you wonder what Google has up their sleeves next. Are we witnessing a Google vs Microsoft fight over the 7 billion dollars industry that 411 number is? With Microsoft buying TellMe only a couple of weeks ago, and Google spending the big bucks on a dumb website like youtube... you just have to wonder. Are either of those on the move to buying the big guys in Speech?

Funny that this happens right now. I was just commenting on the fact that Google would hav to make a move soon if they wanted to compete against Microsoft in the blooming speech recognition industry. Just think ho many people have cell phones in the world... The total number of mobile phone subscribers in the world was estimated at 2.14 billion in 2005.

This is an exciting time to be in the speech business. It should be interesting to see the next big move.