Apple Partners With Nuance For Voice Recognition Technology In iOS 5 Rather Than Microsoft?

Couple of days back, we reported that Apple was negotiating with Nuance Communications to use its voice recognition technology in iOS 5 – the next generation iOS that will be unveiled at WWDC 2011 next month.
TechCrunch has just reported that they’ve received some more interesting information from their source about Apple’s partnership with Nuance.
According to TechCrunch:

• Apple is already using Nuance voice recognition technology in their new data center in North Carolina.
• Apple is expected to announce the partnership at WWDC 2011.
• Apple may also be running their hardware so that it can process the information faster and also avoid sending data to third party servers.
• As rumored earlier, Siri’s artificial intelligence and assistance technology has been “deeply integrated” into iOS 5.

We won’t be surprised if Apple partners with Nuance for the voice recognition technology that drives Siri’s personal assistant iPhone app as it is a leader in this space and also holds wide range of patents. It makes a lot more sense than buying the company, which currently has a market cap of $6.5 billion.
You can checkout the aerial view of Apple’s $1 billion data center in North Carolina:

TechCrunch also reports that Microsoft was pushing Apple to use its voice recognition technology:

one anonymous tipster who correctly knew other information about the two companies tells us that Microsoft had been pushing Apple hard to use their own voice recognition technology in iOS. That attempt was rebuffed, apparently. It will be Nuance all the way.

We’ve also heard that iOS 5 will be heavily built around the cloud and expected to include features like digital music locker that might be dubbed iCloud.
As of now, based on the rumors and speculations, iOS 5 will be all about the cloud and voice recognition technology. It looks like the day when we can tell our iPhone to give us directions to an empty parking spot in the area isn’t too far away (a combination of iOS 5′s speech recognition technology, turn-by-turn navigation apps like Navigon’s MobileNavigator, TomTom and apps like SFpark that allow iPhone users in San Francisco to find an empty parking spot). Voice recognition technology deeply integrated in iOS 5 will also make it a lot safer for such use cases as users won’t have to focus on the iPhone while driving.

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