Friday, October 3, 2008

Nuance caps SNAPin Software deal

Nuance Communications Inc. continued its wave of acquisitions today when it reported that it had closed its purchase of SNAPin Software, a Washington State-based developer of mobile device and server self-service technology.

Burlington-based Nuance, which develops speech recognition software, had announced plans to acquire SNAPin for $180 million in August. Nuance said the SNAPin acquisition allows Nuance to enable customer support based on voice recognition and predictive text so mobile consumers can simply dial, speak or text customer care.

Nuance executed seven acquisitions in 2007, and has remained active in the M&A market this year. Earlier this week it reported that it had acquired Austria-based Philips Speech Recognition Systems for $96.1 million. In April Nuance announced that it would pay $363 million in cash and stock for EScription, a Needham-based provider of computer-aided medical transcription technology,  In August, Nuance was rejected in its bid to acquire Calgary-based Zi Corp. for $40.4 million, a move that led Nuance to file a patent infringement claim against Zi.

Nuance was founded in 1992 as Visioneer Inc., and provides speech and imaging solutions for businesses and consumers, including the Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software application.