Earlier this week Nuance announced its intention to acquire Tegic Communications Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL LLC. While Tegic may not be a household name, many of us have used its T9 predictive text input software on our mobile phones.
The acquisition promises some exciting new mobile interfaces: Combining Tegic’s T9 predictive text and multimodal input solutions with Nuance’s advanced speech technologies for mobile devices, the acquisition sets the stage for a new mobile user interface that combines voice, text and touch to dramatically improve the user experience for consumers and mobile professionals. Building on a partnership between Nuance and Tegic established in 2005, Nuance intends to deliver an all-in-one interface that integrates Nuance and Tegic solutions to support predictive text, speech and touch input. This multimodal interface will provide easier access for users of mobile devices and will be available to all manufacturers across their product lines.
Tegic’s T9 technology has shipped on more than 2.5 billion devices so far!