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Chuong H Nguyen
Nuance Communications stock prices are rising as speculations of a potential sale of the company to Samsung Electronics are heating up. Nuance provides speech and voice recognition software for many products in the market, including cars and GPS, Samsung's own line of Galaxy phones and tablets, as well as Apple's voice assistant Siri.
Nuance is said to be in talks with Samsung and other private equity investors in a sale, though it's unclear where the talks are and if a deal will even happen.
Despite being a leading provider of voice recognition technology, Nuance's biggst business is in healthcare where its software helps digitize patient information. An acquisition by Samsung may mark an increased focus on healthcare for the South Korean company after recent announcements in wearables and a partnership with the University of California, San Francisco.
Nuance also owns the popular Swype gesture keyboard that is preloaded on some Samsung phones.
Currently, Nuance's market cap is around $5.5 billion and the company counts Carl Icahn as its largest shareholder. If Samsung does acquire Nuance, it's unclear what implications the deal would have on Apple and other licensees of Nuance's speech software. Currently, other Android manufacturers who rely on Google Search for voice should be safe as Google Now does not use Nuance's technology.
We'll have to wait and see how this one all plays out but what do you all think about it? Given how much stuff Nuance actually powers, it makes us wonder what products may need to align their resources if the deal does indeed go through.
Source: WSJ
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