Nuance Set To Acquire Vlingo For Siri-Fighting Combo Breaker

When it comes to mergers of a grand scale, there's no lack of ambiance around the most recent: Nuance Communications Inc has announced just today that it has signed and agreement to acquire no less than Vlingo for a power combination of voice assistant and natural language understanding solutions for everything from TVs to phones to tablets to PCs and smart cars. This "$5 billion market opportunity" as they say will work to attain the masses hungry for such abilities since you-know-who incorporated Siri into their iPhone 4S earlier this year. Is this the combination the rest of the mobile world needs to keep the voice assistance ball rolling?

Everyone appears to be high-fiving one another in both companies as they see this combination as a killer contribution to the future of smart devices on the whole. As Mike Thompson, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Nuance Mobile says:

"Inspired by the introduction of services such as Apple's Siri and our own Dragon Go!, virtually every mobile and consumer electronics company on the planet is looking for ways to integrate natural, conversational voice interactions into their mobile products, applications, and services. By acquiring Vlingo, we are able to accelerate the pace of innovation to meet this demand." – Thompson

What we've got to look forward to now is more than likely a solution similar to Siri on Android. Not that competitors haven't been trying to do so since the launch of the iPhone 4S, because they certainly have, but herein lies perhaps the first real big-time effort that has a chance to make it a reality. Here's to the future of voice assistance!