Vlingo

According to a new report out of the Wall Street Jounral, speech and dictation service Nuance Communications has held acquisition talks with Samsung and has been exploring the possibility of a sale. It is widely speculated that the Apple’s virtual assistant Siri is powered by Nuance in the back-end. Samsung started partnering with Nuance late in 2013 for the voice recognition functionalities on its Galaxy Gear smart watch and Galaxy Note 3 smartphone.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCTjgbEtYKY&feature=player_embedded#]

Nuance just released a significant update to its Swype keyboard software that it acquired last year.

The entire UI is revamped. Users can still quick-swipe for input, but the keyboard now offers multimodal support with the option to press keys and initiate Nuance’s “Next Word Prediction” technology. Swype’s built-in dictionary actually learns over time and crops words from emails and texts for easier communication. Users also have the ability to handwrite or trace letters, words, or symbols, or they can click the Dragon Diction button to launch integrated voice-recognition.

The latest version of Swype is now in beta, but it is not compatible with all Android devices.

Visit beta.swype.com for more information.

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Shortly after the new Siri-like voice assistant feature of Samsung’s new Galaxy S III, known as “S-Voice,” made its way to other Android devices via an available APK, reports claimed Samsung began to block non-S III users from accessing the service. XDA Developer community members confirmed (via TNW) that Vlingo, the company behind the voice recognition technology used in S-Voice, is now blocking users from trying to access its servers with devices other than the S III.

In December of last year, Nuance, the company currently powering speech in Apple’s Siri app on the iPhone 4S, acquired Vlingo. Samsung previously collaborated with Vlingo for the Voice Commander feature for the Galaxy S II. We expect Nuance has improved Vlingo since the acquisition, while Apple’s relationship with Nuance is not stopping Samsung from using the Vlingo technology. In an interview in October, Norman Winarsky, co-founder of Siri, told us Vlingo was originally used in Siri when it first developed, but noted it is rather easy for apps like Siri to implement new speech recognition technology if it comes along.

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