The Nuances of Apple

First Apple bought Siri last year, a mobile application developer that allowed the user to use voice commands to book a restaurant table or to check movie times. Now Apple has moved on to bigger things and has possibly set its sights on Nuance, the company that developed the technology that allowed Siri to do what it does. Sounds like a good move to me.

Some people are speculating whether Apple is indeed trying to buy Nuance or perhaps enter a partnership agreement with them instead. If Apple were to buy over Nuance, some have pegged the deal to be around $5-6 billion. It seems that either speculation has caused Nuance’s stock to rise to $22.93 for the biggest intraday gain since April 2009.

However in either situation Apple would stand to benefit as Android’s voice control is indeed way ahead of Apple and being able to integrate the technology of Siri and Nuance into their iOS 5 would put them on par with their competition, possibly even put them ahead.

In all honesty the question I would like to raise here is voice control – extremely useful or novelty? Thoughts?