Whoa! Did Apple buy Voice Recognition company Nuance?

Update: Apple didn’t buy Nuance. Woz mis-read something apparently.

…or did Woz have a memory issue?  He just said that Apple bought Nuance (:53 secs in).  Yes, the same Nuance that just acquired MacSpeech earlier this year.  Could he have meant Siri?  He seemed pretty sure of himself and even mentioned Siri by name as the company that uses Nuance.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoEcaD5P0x4&w=640&h=385]

Nuance (NUAN) is valued at just over $5 Billion.  That’s a lot, but a drop in the bucket for Apple’s $50 billion war chest.   Apple likely paid a premium on the stock that closed at 17.11 today (again if Woz isn’t off his game).   Although this video is a few days old, Nuance reported earnings today and didn’t mention any sort of acquisition.

The move would make a lot of sense for Apple as it moves into new forms of input.  It trails behind both Google and Microsoft in Speech Recognition which is big differentiator in smartphone OSes.

Woz also said that Apple also bought a mapping company – which is likely referring to PlaceBase which I told you about last year.

Don’t blame me if Apple just hired the founders :P