Nuance Acquires MacSpeech, Extending Dragon NaturallySpeaking Family to the Mac

Trusted by Millions – on the PC, the iPhone, the Mac, and in the Car – Nuance’s Dragon Speech Recognition Puts Speech within Reach for Everyone

BURLINGTON, MA – February 16, 2010 — Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) today announced that it has acquired MacSpeech, the leading provider of speech recognition solutions for Apple Macintosh computers.  The agreement will allow Nuance to extend the Dragon NaturallySpeaking family of products to the growing community of Mac users as a native Mac application. 

“We have heard from our customers – and from the Mac community at large – for years that they want Dragon for the Mac environment,” said Peter Mahoney, senior vice president and general manager for Dragon, Nuance Communications.  “In 2008, MacSpeech licensed our underlying Dragon dictation technology to deliver MacSpeech Dictate, and the demand has only continued to grow, fueled recently by our recent launch of Dragon Dictation for the iPhone in North America. MacSpeech’s knowledge of the Mac platform and its deep understanding of Mac users, coupled with our decades-long experience with speech recognition and the popular Dragon brand, will allow us to provide the world’s best dictation technology in a solution that is 100-percent Mac.”

Through the acquisition of MacSpeech, Nuance will be positioned to accelerate the growth opportunity for MacSpeech products by adding additional research and development support, Dragon brand recognition, marketing support, and distribution channels.  In addition, the acquisition presents more growth opportunities for Dragon NaturallySpeaking with new audiences and on new devices.  

Dragon has long been the leading speech recognition application on the desktop, used by millions of people around the world.  As demand for speech has grown, Nuance has sought to make speech recognition accessible to more people, from more places and devices.  Nuance recently launched the popular Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search Apps for iPhone in North America, and both applications quickly climbed to the top of the charts on the App Store.  And now automotive manufacturers can harness the power of Dragon to allow drivers to access dynamic real-time information and services by voice – right in their cars.  

“MacSpeech responded to the growing demand for a native Macintosh, high-quality speech recognition solution with MacSpeech Dictate integrated with the Dragon speech recognition engine,” said Andrew Taylor, president of MacSpeech. “We are excited to become part of the Nuance team and accelerate our ability to deliver great speech solutions to the Mac community.”

For more information please visit http://www.nuance.com/macspeech