Samsung May Acquire Nuance, the Voice-Recognition Firm Behind Siri: Report

Nuance Communications, the company that powers the Siri voice-based virtual assistant present on Apple's iOS devices, is reportedly in talks with Samsung for a possible sale of its business.

At present, it is not yet clear whether the talks have reached a conclusion or not, but according to people familiar with the matter, the sale talks included not just Samsung Electronics, but private equity firms as well, as reported by Wall Street Journal on Monday.

The speech-recognition software maker (best known for its Dragon NaturallySpeaking software) Nuance Communications is based in Burlington, Massachusetts, US, and licenses its voice-recognition technology to a number of major companies, that includes Apple, Samsung, Amazon and more.

While Apple had kept its partnership with Nuance for Siri a secret for a while, in 2013 Nuance CEO Paul Ricci had confirmed that its technology powers Siri's voice-recognition capabilities, found on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Ricci had then said Nuance's technology had been used in Samsung's mobile devices and televisions, and would also be used for its wearables.

We don't know what impact the rumoured sale will have on Apple's relationship with Nuance or whether the deal will eventually take place or not, but according to WSJ report the presence of activist investor Carl Icahn "can increase the odds of a sale of all or part of the company or a stock buyback." As of March 31, Icahn owns about 19 percent of Nuance, which makes him the biggest shareholder.

Notably, Apple only uses Nuance's voice-recognition abilities for its digital personal assistant Siri, but beyond that the other functionalities comes from integration with data from companies like Yelp, OpenTable, and Wolfram Alpha.