Speech Recognition has a tough reputation. And instinctively dissing it, as Cramer does, will find many supporters. But speech recognition is here to stay and is only getting better. I have owned NUAN since its IPO and ridden all the rides it has to offfer, selling and buying along the way. And I also have first hand knowledge of the speech market as my company has been providing speech applications for the past 5 years, using Nuance speech recognition the entire time. The fact is that all major tech brand names, Microsoft, Google, Apple, Cisco, just to name a smattering, have invested heavily in speech over the last 12 months. The iPhone will certainly have speech recognition. Also all auto manufacturers, all of them, are racing to get their speech interfaces up to speed. A few of them happen to be our customers. Also, the market has consolidated significantly in one year, and Nuance is on top of the heap, dominating telephone-based self service, medical applications and now with recent acquisitions also the mobile, embedded speech arena. They are releasing their best speech recognition engine yet Nuance 9 in the coming weeks. I am on for the long ride.
$12.22 (01/18/07)
