Microsoft Acquires Voice Recognition Pioneer Nuance Communications

As rumored, Microsoft has announced the acquisition of Nuance Communications, the speech-to-text and voice recognition pioneer, for US$19.7 billion - the second-largest acquisition in Microsoft’s history. Microsoft apparently recognized the value of Nuance's efforts in healthcare, financial services, telco, retail, travel, and government applications, and recent investments in conversational AI. How will Microsoft leverage the company's products and technologies is certainly more related to his efforts in those very same verticals and synergy with its Office and Business software suites, than any effort to revive Cortana.

A new report from Juniper Research has found that consumers will interact with voice assistants on over 8.4 billion devices by 2024; overtaking the world’s population and growing 113% compared to the 4.2 billion voice control devices expected to be in use by year end 2020. The value chain for voice assistants and interfaces is rapidly expanding to include more and more players, and device OEMs (from smartphones, speakers and wearables to cars and fridges), system integrators, apps developers and cloud providers are all escalating efforts to provide personalized voice solutions.

Market research firm Futuresource Consulting announced the latest edition of its "Voice Assistants in Consumer Electronics" report. Voice Assistants (VAs) are being integrated into an increasing number and variety of connected consumer devices in multiple markets and are on course to develop as a major user interface over the next 2-3 years, according to this latest report, which leverages new industry and end-user research to assess the size and shape of the market at a worldwide and regional level.

R&D departments in the whole global audio and mobile industries are focused on developing the next-generation of voice-activated speakers exploring the success of the Amazon Echo. Most companies are exploring the tools and developments kits that make it easy to implement Amazon's Alexa or Google's Assistant voice personal assistants. Now, Harman unveiled its own effort of a voice-activated speaker, working with Microsoft's Cortana and featuring improved audio features.

Conexant’s AudioSmart 3.0 audio technology is making interactions with intelligent personal assistants more informed and productive. Conexant showcased the world’s first PC to receive Microsoft Skype for Business certification as a Group Speakerphone – along with its four-microphone, far-field voice input pre-processing technology and context-aware control automation software, introducing a suite of technologies that intelligently sense context, leveraging information about how a device is being used to automatically optimize the end-user experience.