Monday, January 9, 2012

Nuance announces Smart TV play called Dragon TV

By Galen Moore, Boston Business Journal

As a race for smart TV heats up, Nuance Communications Inc. aims to make obsolete the domestic battle for control over the TV remote. With Apple TV and Google TV both reportedly in the works, Burlington-based Nuance (Nasdaq: NUAN) is making an early play at being the provider of natural language processing software for this nascent market.

At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Monday, Nuance unveiled Dragon TV, a voice and natural language processing software aimed at makers of TVs, set-top boxes, video game consoles and other devices, as well as cable service operators. The software is designed to allow TV viewers to command their televisions using voice, rather than the traditional remote control, initiating programming queries and navigating channels by name, rather than searching for the right number. In addition, the software is designed to let users communicate via SMS and other web-enabled services, through their connected TV sets and TV devices.

In an example included in its news release, Monday, a TV watcher says “Send message to Julie, ‘Old School is on TBS again this week – super excited.’” The news release cited a report by Strategy Analytics, estimating that 1.6 billion TVs will be connected to the Internet by 2014.

Last month, Nuance and its acquisition target/competitor/legal opponent Vlingo Inc. settled a years-long dispute, with Nuance acquiring Cambridge’s Vlingo for an undisclosed amount. Nuance also acquired virtual typing helper company Swype Inc. for $102.5 million in October.