You are describing a tender offer which not really a hostile takeover that I referred to in my original comment. Who knows if Nuance would accept a tender offer but if they would not then the suitor moves on to more hostile techniques of which there are a number of that could be tried.
Yes, I addressed your nonsensical hostile tackeover idea with the second half of my post that you seemed to have failed to read. To have a hostile takeover, you either need to own a majority of the company or have a group of investors backing you that owns a majority. Good luck with that when Nuance is 93% institutional ownership which usually means you have lots of people who own small percentages of the company.
Yes, I addressed your nonsensical hostile tackeover idea with the second half of my post that you seemed to have failed to read. To have a hostile takeover, you either need to own a majority of the company or have a group of investors backing you that owns a majority. Good luck with that when Nuance is 93% institutional ownership which usually means you have lots of people who own small percentages of the company.
Hostile takeovers are almost always possible depending on how much money you want to spend to get it done.
Great, it says nothing that contradicts anything I said. In order to have a hostile takeover you need to either buy up a majority share of stock to change management (which would be next to impossible with high institutional ownership because of the very low turnover) or you lodge a proxy fight where you get a majority of shareholders to back you. Which is exactly what your link says and what I said in what you quoted. This is before you get into the fact that hostile takeovers have a huge fail rate (as in around 95% or more).
Yes, I addressed your nonsensical hostile tackeover idea with the second half of my post that you seemed to have failed to read. To have a hostile takeover, you either need to own a majority of the company or have a group of investors backing you that owns a majority. Good luck with that when Nuance is 93% institutional ownership which usually means you have lots of people who own small percentages of the company.
Yes, but the top 10 institutional holders have ~53% of the stock.
Go and offer a fund manager a 100% markup (which MStone suggested) on one of their holdings, and it's unlikely they would turn it down.
You get 50% of the voting stock, it's pretty simple to replace the management with one that would back a takeover.
Great, it says nothing that contradicts anything I said.
It says a lot more than what you wrote and that which you left out was the basis of my point.
I think you forgot that I completely I agreed with your original comment in that buying Nuance was not going to happen as it would be too expensive and therefore not a prudent investment for Apple anyway.
Great, it says nothing that contradicts anything I said. In order to have a hostile takeover you need to either buy up a majority share of stock to change management (which would be next to impossible with high institutional ownership because of the very low turnover) or you lodge a proxy fight where you get a majority of shareholders to back you. Which is exactly what your link says and what I said in what you quoted. This is before you get into the fact that hostile takeovers have a huge fail rate (as in around 95% or more).
Why are you so convinced institutional owners aren't interested in selling stock at a 100% markup?
It says a lot more than what you wrote and that which you left out was the basis of my point.
I think you forgot that I completely I agreed with your original comment in that buying Nuance was not going to happen as it would be too expensive and not a prudent investment for Apple anyway.
What exactly did I leave out? Umm, nothing. I basically said the exact same thing it did. You need to buy up a majority share or you have to get a majority of shareholders on your side. Also, a hostile takeover if successful is a long and drawn out process. It again, is not just Apple snapping its fingers and *voila* it owns Nuance.
Why are you so convinced institutional owners aren't interested in selling stock at a 100% markup?
Because if simply offering a large premium to buy the company guaranteed success, Michael Dell wouldn't be facing such issues taking his company private, right? The way things work in reality very often do not live up to such ideals as you think.
To further add, Microsoft offered a 62% premium to Yahoo! to purchase it back in 2008 and its offer failed. According to your logic it should have been no problem for them to get shareholder approval, right?
Thanks for the finance lesson. I realize it must pain you to cast your pearls before swine, but next time, please try to do it without resorting to personal insults. It just makes your argument look weaker.
Because if simply offering a large premium to buy the company guaranteed success, Michael Dell wouldn't be facing such issues taking his company private, right? The way things work in reality very often do not live up to such ideals as you think.
Michael Dell made a shit offer - that's the problem.
I have often considered whether or not Apple might be data mining every Siri command to develop a better internal speech recognition engine.
They would be remiss if they aren't but I'd think the focus would be on making the Siri aspect of it more intelligent before focusing on their own speech-to-text engine.
I have often considered whether or not Apple might be data mining every Siri command to develop a better internal speech recognition engine.
That is what Google did with their GOOG-411 project (beta). They collected three years worth of voice samples to serve as a foundation to their current voice search application. They built it from scratch rather than license someone else's technology. I wish Apple would do more of that sort of thing. For some reason they tend to acquire a bunch of work in progress technologies and then cobble the pieces and parts together like they did with Maps and Siri.
They would be remiss if they aren't but I'd think the focus would be on making the Siri aspect of it more intelligent before focusing on their own speech-to-text engine.
I would think they could have been capturing data since release. If so then they should have sufficient data to develop a speech recognition engine in English at least.
Speech Recognition will become (more so than now) a major service in the future. This is an area that I believe Apple absolutely must own.
Nuance is arguably the most predatory corporation in history. Anything Apple can do to escape their circle is to be applauded.
It pains me to admit it, but Google's app on iOS is better than voice search on Safari. Apple has tendency to jump out in front and then get complacent, allowing others to quickly build on it's success and surpass them.
You mean "allowing others to quickly steal on Apple's success."
I would think they could have been capturing data since release. If so then they should have sufficient data to develop a speech recognition engine in English at least.
Speech Recognition will become (more so than now) a major service in the future. This is an area that I believe Apple absolutely must own.
Nuance is arguably the most predatory corporation in history. Anything Apple can do to escape their circle is to be applauded.
In under 2 years? There has been many decades of development on this. I think Nuance is based off of earlier technology. I simply don't see Apple coming in and build it up from scratch with their own tech in such a short time. And like I stated, the real issue of Siri's usability and performance is based on the intelligence of the digital personal assistant, not the speech-to-text engine, so if they do that I'd expect that to happen well after Siri is well out of Beta and considerably more robust and more flawless.
In under 2 years? There has been many decades of development on this. I think Nuance is based off of earlier technology. I simply don't see Apple coming in and build it up from scratch with their own tech in such a short time. And like I stated, the real issue of Siri's usability and performance is based on the intelligence of the digital personal assistant, not the speech-to-text engine, so if they do that I'd expect that to happen well after Siri is well out of Beta and considerably more robust and more flawless.
No. I only meant they have had sufficient time to capture speech samples on which to base speech recognition algorithms.
Comments
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
You are describing a tender offer which not really a hostile takeover that I referred to in my original comment. Who knows if Nuance would accept a tender offer but if they would not then the suitor moves on to more hostile techniques of which there are a number of that could be tried.
Yes, I addressed your nonsensical hostile tackeover idea with the second half of my post that you seemed to have failed to read. To have a hostile takeover, you either need to own a majority of the company or have a group of investors backing you that owns a majority. Good luck with that when Nuance is 93% institutional ownership which usually means you have lots of people who own small percentages of the company.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Applelunatic
Yes, I addressed your nonsensical hostile tackeover idea with the second half of my post that you seemed to have failed to read. To have a hostile takeover, you either need to own a majority of the company or have a group of investors backing you that owns a majority. Good luck with that when Nuance is 93% institutional ownership which usually means you have lots of people who own small percentages of the company.
Go read this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeover#Hostile_takeovers
Hostile takeovers are almost always possible depending on how much money you want to spend to get it done.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
Go read this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takeover#Hostile_takeovers
Hostile takeovers are almost always possible depending on how much money you want to spend to get it done.
Great, it says nothing that contradicts anything I said. In order to have a hostile takeover you need to either buy up a majority share of stock to change management (which would be next to impossible with high institutional ownership because of the very low turnover) or you lodge a proxy fight where you get a majority of shareholders to back you. Which is exactly what your link says and what I said in what you quoted. This is before you get into the fact that hostile takeovers have a huge fail rate (as in around 95% or more).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Applelunatic
Yes, I addressed your nonsensical hostile tackeover idea with the second half of my post that you seemed to have failed to read. To have a hostile takeover, you either need to own a majority of the company or have a group of investors backing you that owns a majority. Good luck with that when Nuance is 93% institutional ownership which usually means you have lots of people who own small percentages of the company.
Yes, but the top 10 institutional holders have ~53% of the stock.
Go and offer a fund manager a 100% markup (which MStone suggested) on one of their holdings, and it's unlikely they would turn it down.
You get 50% of the voting stock, it's pretty simple to replace the management with one that would back a takeover.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Applelunatic
Great, it says nothing that contradicts anything I said.
It says a lot more than what you wrote and that which you left out was the basis of my point.
I think you forgot that I completely I agreed with your original comment in that buying Nuance was not going to happen as it would be too expensive and therefore not a prudent investment for Apple anyway.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Applelunatic
Great, it says nothing that contradicts anything I said. In order to have a hostile takeover you need to either buy up a majority share of stock to change management (which would be next to impossible with high institutional ownership because of the very low turnover) or you lodge a proxy fight where you get a majority of shareholders to back you. Which is exactly what your link says and what I said in what you quoted. This is before you get into the fact that hostile takeovers have a huge fail rate (as in around 95% or more).
Why are you so convinced institutional owners aren't interested in selling stock at a 100% markup?
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
It says a lot more than what you wrote and that which you left out was the basis of my point.
I think you forgot that I completely I agreed with your original comment in that buying Nuance was not going to happen as it would be too expensive and not a prudent investment for Apple anyway.
What exactly did I leave out? Umm, nothing. I basically said the exact same thing it did. You need to buy up a majority share or you have to get a majority of shareholders on your side. Also, a hostile takeover if successful is a long and drawn out process. It again, is not just Apple snapping its fingers and *voila* it owns Nuance.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PaulMJohnson
Why are you so convinced institutional owners aren't interested in selling stock at a 100% markup?
Because if simply offering a large premium to buy the company guaranteed success, Michael Dell wouldn't be facing such issues taking his company private, right? The way things work in reality very often do not live up to such ideals as you think.
To further add, Microsoft offered a 62% premium to Yahoo! to purchase it back in 2008 and its offer failed. According to your logic it should have been no problem for them to get shareholder approval, right?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Applelunatic
What exactly did I leave out? Umm, nothing.
Thanks for the finance lesson. I realize it must pain you to cast your pearls before swine, but next time, please try to do it without resorting to personal insults. It just makes your argument look weaker.
Nuance is a multi-billion dollar corporation with solutions in industries that would be highly disruptive to the ability of Apple to focus.
I have often considered whether or not Apple might be data mining every Siri command to develop a better internal speech recognition engine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Applelunatic
Because if simply offering a large premium to buy the company guaranteed success, Michael Dell wouldn't be facing such issues taking his company private, right? The way things work in reality very often do not live up to such ideals as you think.
Michael Dell made a shit offer - that's the problem.
They would be remiss if they aren't but I'd think the focus would be on making the Siri aspect of it more intelligent before focusing on their own speech-to-text engine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MacBook Pro
I have often considered whether or not Apple might be data mining every Siri command to develop a better internal speech recognition engine.
That is what Google did with their GOOG-411 project (beta). They collected three years worth of voice samples to serve as a foundation to their current voice search application. They built it from scratch rather than license someone else's technology. I wish Apple would do more of that sort of thing. For some reason they tend to acquire a bunch of work in progress technologies and then cobble the pieces and parts together like they did with Maps and Siri.
I would think they could have been capturing data since release. If so then they should have sufficient data to develop a speech recognition engine in English at least.
Speech Recognition will become (more so than now) a major service in the future. This is an area that I believe Apple absolutely must own.
Nuance is arguably the most predatory corporation in history. Anything Apple can do to escape their circle is to be applauded.
You mean "allowing others to quickly steal on Apple's success."
Originally Posted by jungmark
You mean "allowing others to quickly steal on Apple's success."
You mean "Sues the ever-loving crap out of these wretched thieves who manage to magically slip away anyway."
In under 2 years? There has been many decades of development on this. I think Nuance is based off of earlier technology. I simply don't see Apple coming in and build it up from scratch with their own tech in such a short time. And like I stated, the real issue of Siri's usability and performance is based on the intelligence of the digital personal assistant, not the speech-to-text engine, so if they do that I'd expect that to happen well after Siri is well out of Beta and considerably more robust and more flawless.
No. I only meant they have had sufficient time to capture speech samples on which to base speech recognition algorithms.