[December 20, 2011] Nuance to buy Cambridge-based Vlingo Tweet Dec 20, 2011 (Boston Herald - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- Fueled by demand for virtual assistant and voice-enabled capabilities, Nuance Communications, Inc. of Burlington announced today it has signed an agreement to acquire Cambridge-based Vlingo, Inc. in what executives say will speed up the "pace of innovation" to meet consumer needs. "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," said Mike Thompson, senior vice president and general manager for Nuance Mobile, in a statement. "By acquiring Vlingo, we are able to accelerate the pace of innovation to meet this demand." The deal would allow Nuance, a provider of voice and language recognition software, to take advantage of the adoption of intelligent mobile assistants, where businesses, doctors, consumers and patients can engage in more natural interactions with devices and systems all over the world. "Vlingo and Nuance have long shared a similar vision for the power and global proliferation of mobile voice and language understanding. As a result of our complementary research and development efforts, our companies are stronger together than alone," said Vlingo CEO Dave Grannan in a statement. "Our combined resources afford us the opportunity to better compete, and offer a powerful proposition to customers, partners and developers. Both companies said consumer interest and demand for intelligent voice interfaces has created a $5 billion market opportunity that spans phones, tablets, cars, televisions, navigation devices, computers and music players. @bostonherald.com ___ (c)2011 the Boston Herald Visit the Boston Herald at www.bostonherald.com Distributed by MCT Information Services [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]