Speech Heads, if you caught my brother Adam B.’s article today, Nuance has acquired Jott for an undisclosed amount.
The deal is apparently a month old, and was only announced after a web page from Ackerly Partners, one of Jott’s investors, noted that the deal had been made in June. From there, according to Brier Dudley’s Seattle Times blog, the news burbled up on TechFlash.
The acquisition, however, signals that Nuance is serious about its place in the mobile space. As we’ve reported before in our review of Nuance’s voicemail-to-text offering, VM2T, and subsequent articles, the company’s entire business proposition is OEM and carrier-facing. Nuance has not made direct-to-consumer plays, letting its partners—many of them already big household names—face the public with their offerings. Jott, by contrast, makes direct-to-consumer bids.
Given all the fanfare about carrier deals from some of Nuance’s competitors, the acquisition of Jott has gotten some thinking that this might be a shift in direction for Nunace. Not so, though, says Mike Thompson, senior vice president for Nuance Mobile.
“Our primary customers are operators, OEMs, and enterprise organizations. That’s who Nuance sells software applications and services to, and that will continue to be the highest priority,” he says.
He adds, however, that Nuance does “do consumer work for a variety of reasons in certain parts of our business. Being very close to consumers allows for rapid innovation and lots of interesting things that you can learn.”
He also asserts that the purchase of Jott is not a reactive gesture to happenings in the mobile market at all, praising its new property as being strong and innovative. Nuance has no plans to scrap Jott’s direct consumer customers, nor have its strategy do an about face. Rather, it plans to build on Jott’s strengths with its own.
“As a small start up, Jott’s strategy was selling direct to consumers,” writes Datamonitor associate analyst Aphrodite Brinsmead in an email to Speech Technology. “Nuance will continue to support and target customers directly but its key focus will be in gaining carrier relationships. Carriers have a large, diverse user base and the ability to bring speech-to-text to many new customers.”
She points to Jotts offerings like Jott Assistant which handles voice reminders, texts, emails, etc. as value that Jott brings to Nuance.
“Nuance will gain a stronger position against growing competitors, such as SpinVox and Google Voice, by adding extra features like these to its service,” Brinsmead says. “Nuance is ramping up its mobile portfolio and aims to automate all mobile interactions with speech.”
