Nuance Communications and VoiceBox Technologies to Collaborate on Voice Navigation Solutions

LAS VEGAS — Nuance Communications Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) and VoiceBox Technologies Inc. entered a joint initiative to develop voice navigation applications for the personal navigation device (PND), automotive, and mobile markets.

Nuance and VoiceBox are collaborating on applications that combine Nuance's speech technology and natural language suite with VoiceBox's conversational voice search processes, which recognize context and intent from free-form speech, to deliver PND functionality. Conversational voice interfaces have become a way to access the range of information and features available on today's navigation systems, including music and media, hands-free dialing, points of interest, address entry, turn-by-turn directions, and map control.

The Nuance and VoiceBox collaboration is intended to provide manufacturers with the ability to deploy multidimensional speech recognition technology on PNDs, embedded telematics, and mobile markets.