Nuance confirms its voice technology is behind Apple's Siri

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  • Reply 21 of 43

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by mstone View Post


    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.

  • Reply 22 of 43
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Applelunatic View Post




    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.

  • Reply 23 of 43

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by mstone View Post


    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).

  • Reply 24 of 43
    paulmjohnsonpaulmjohnson Posts: 1,380member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Applelunatic View Post


    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.

  • Reply 25 of 43
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Applelunatic View Post




    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.

  • Reply 26 of 43
    paulmjohnsonpaulmjohnson Posts: 1,380member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Applelunatic View Post


    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?

  • Reply 27 of 43

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by mstone View Post


    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.

  • Reply 28 of 43

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by PaulMJohnson View Post


     


    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.

  • Reply 29 of 43
    am8449am8449 Posts: 392member
    Why now, I wonder, would they finally admit to this? Did a non-disclosure agreement expire or something?
  • Reply 30 of 43


    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?

  • Reply 31 of 43
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Applelunatic View Post




    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. 

  • Reply 32 of 43
    macbook promacbook pro Posts: 1,605member
    jd_in_sb wrote: »
    Why didn't Apple buy Nuance?

    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.
  • Reply 33 of 43
    paulmjohnsonpaulmjohnson Posts: 1,380member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by Applelunatic View Post


    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.

  • Reply 34 of 43
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    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.
  • Reply 35 of 43
    mstonemstone Posts: 11,510member

    Quote:

    Originally Posted by MacBook Pro View Post




    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.

  • Reply 36 of 43
    macbook promacbook pro Posts: 1,605member
    solipsismx wrote: »
    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.
  • Reply 37 of 43
    jungmarkjungmark Posts: 6,926member
    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."
  • Reply 38 of 43
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member


    Originally Posted by jungmark View Post

    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."

  • Reply 39 of 43
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    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.
  • Reply 40 of 43
    macbook promacbook pro Posts: 1,605member
    solipsismx wrote: »
    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.
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