Nuance Communications (Nasdaq: NUAN), which is a leader in speech recognition software, has built its business through an aggressive M&A strategy (the company's technology will be deployed on about a billion mobile phones this year).
And, this week the company has struck another deal: the acquisition of Jott (the price was not disclosed).
The company has a cool service, which converts speech into text -- and then emails the message.
In fact, over the past couple years, Jott has gotten good traction and has received more than $6 million in venture capital. There are also some key deals, such as with salesforce.com, inc. (NYSE: CRM).
However, to really bolster growth Jott would probably need much more capital, which is difficult in the current environment. At the same time, Nuance can easily cross-sell the service and provide increased overall value to its customers. Also, the company needs to find ways to compete against tough rivals like Google, Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG).
Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook
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