A
pple could lose the core technology behind its voice-command assistant Siri to its rival Samsung.
Siri is the product of SRI International, a research lab that has created many technologies and biosciences products. The digital assistant was spun out as Siri which Apple acquired in 2010, but the voice recognition engine is provided by Nuance Communications.
In June, Nuance and Samsung began merger talks, and everything “slowed” due to “complexities”.
Now it appears that the talks are back on and Nuance redeemed $250 million in 2027 convertible notes to save a future acquirer around $50 million from a debt-to-share conversion.
If Samsung buys Nuance, then Apple is in trouble. It would not want to buy the outfit because it is too expensive for what it would get and Jobs’ Mob would get all sorts of businesses like health care and imaging it does not want.
Samsung on the other hand could lap that side of the business up. It already has a small healthcare business, and it would get access to 450,000 clinicians, 10,000 healthcare institutions, 50 percent of radiology reports and 98 percent of most connected hospitals.
If Apple had not done so much to hack off Samsung, maybe the outfit would have let it buy a licence, however after all the court cases this is not likely to be the case.
