Voice recognition giant Nuance Communications has just picked up a pretty big company in the transcription sector: Spinvox. Among other things, Spinvox runs a voicemail service that translates voicemail into text and sends it to you as an e-mail. Nuance’s involvement in mobile is wide-spanning, but the latest from them has been a pair of iPhone apps. Overall, this sounds like a mutually beneficial partnership in that Nuance’s seniority can bring a lot of expertise to existing Spinvox customers, and Spinvox’s existing carrier relationships could be useful to Nuance, who has spent most of their time with handset manufacturers. Spinvox got in some hot water with privacy advocates over the summer for rumours that they actually outsource the transcription process to South Africa, but maybe that situation will change now that they’re under new management. The acquistion cost Nuance $102.5 million, broken up into $66 million cash and $36.5 million in shares.
[via Nuance]