What do Siri and Novauris (News - Alert) Technologies have in common? Several years back, Siri was a little known voice recognition app. Novauris is an offshoot of Dragon Systems R&D U.K. I’m sure that you have all seen the mini infomercial five-minute ads for the voice dictation program from Dragon Systems.
Well, now there is another thing that these two companies have in common. Both Siri and Novauris have been acquired by Apple. People love to talk to their smartphones and have a soothing voice respond to their inquiries or commands.
I’m not sure why Apple (News 
- Alert) has kept this under wraps since Novauris was actually acquired sometime in the fourth quarter 2013. Most likely Apple will use the new acquisition’s functionality to make improvements to Siri. Here is a quote that you may have heard once or a hundred times, “Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans.”
Verizon has been pretty busy lately in the acquisitions department. Probably the most notable was its buy out of Vodafone’s (News - Alert) stake in Verizon Wireless. Some of the other transactions include Intel Media as well as swapping out some wireless spectrum. This week we have another purchase.
Cincinnati Bell (News - Alert), which is a dominant player in Cincinnati and Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky suburbs, announced this week that it has agreed to sell its entire wireless spectrum to Verizon (News - Alert). Cincinnati Bell president and CEO, Ted Torback, feels that their customers can be served better by other wireless offerings in the market.
United Recovery Systems, LP is a Texas-based Limited Partnership which has established itself as a top issuer in the credit card, retail, commercial and deficiency loan industries. Over the past several years it has been growing by acquiring other companies.
The Array Services Group includes J.C. Christensen & Associates, a collections business that manages more than a million accounts, CareCall, which contracts with companies to be an outsourced call center and ProSource, which works exclusively with health care providers as their receivables department.
This past Tuesday, Array became the property of United Recovery. It is said that all of the employees, which totals 600 people, are expected to remain with the company after the acquisition. The Array management teams will remain in place continuing to operate the Array family of companies.
Wattpad is an online community that is themed around reading and writing. Users are able to post articles, stories and poems about anything. They can do this either online or through the Wattpad app. The content includes work by undiscovered and published writers.
This week Wattpad announced that it has raised an additional $46 million. The funny thing is that while it is always preferable to have additional funds, it seems that Wattpad’s original financing of $17.3 million, which was led by Khosla in 2012 pretty much, remains unused. Talk about managing your money!
It was announced that EXFO, Inc., a company that designs and manufactures test and service assurance instruments for fixed and mobile telecom networks, has acquired the assets of ByteSphere LLC. This is a privately held software company in the Boston area that specializes in global IT management and network monitoring solutions.
All that we can say for sure about this acquisition is that EXFO will be extending its capabilities in network performance management for infrastructure monitoring. It is gaining ByteSphere’s advanced patented techniques for infrastructure performance management, including network element polling and fault management.
Every day a lot of companies make deals, raise funds and form partnerships. We try to keep an eye on these Wheelings & Dealings. Whether it is an acquisition or a joint partnership that benefits several companies, we will keep you apprised of all of the important details.
