Acquisition of Swype – Is this Android game changer?

In a very important move last week Nuance, the best voice recognition software available in the industry acquired Swype for over 100 Million dollar. It is interesting to see that Swype was the software that was powering Android based cell phones that will allow users to swipe and type in the virtual keyboard thereby allowing users to save much time.

Android – iOS game:

As everyone knows, today’s mobile OS market is a head on combat between Android and iOS from apple. While Apple is certainly successful in having the best hardware in the market, other providers are catching up with it. While iOS is only available on Apple products, Android is universally available. And the adoption to Android by companies like Samsung and Motorola is very evident that Android will be a success if their partners were able to sell more phones when compared to iPhone.

Nuance and iOS:

iPhone 4S came lately and had an interesting feature called Siri, which is more of a personal assistant to mobile users. This feature itself came with the acquisition of Siri by Apple. Though Apple is really not the company that acquires a lot like Google, they did the right thing. Now the problem for Apple is the fact that Siri which is completely backed up by Nuance has acquired Swype which is an Android thing. This will be a big problem for Apple folks if Google tries to acquire Nuance.

Will Google acquire Nuance?

This is the billion dollar question that is a big talk in Silicon Valley. Nuance has grown to a great space and if Google wants to acquire Nuance, they might have to spend billions of dollars. However if Google acquires Nuance, it would be a big problem for Apple. Since Apples voice recognition feature is completely provided by Nuance, problem can come up in this deal.

What prevents Apple?

Though Apple is the largest company today with the market value whooping like anything, they are not good in acquiring companies. Apple has always tried and succeeded in creating software and hardware in house. Their acquisition strategy is very difference when compared to other players in the market. So we might wonder if Apple is coming up with any of such features that are being developed in house. With the death of veteran Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, things are little complicated in Apple house. We will have to see if the new CEO Tim Cook makes the strategy of acquiring and surprising the audience.