Nuance acquires Jott, the simple voice-to-text mobile phone service

Speech recognition company Nuance has acquired Jott, a company that lets you use your voice to create notes, set reminders, send email and text messages.

We wrote about Jott when it first launched two years ago and praised it for its simplicity and ease of use. Jott continued to evolve, allowing you to do things like post things to web sites, and use any mobile device to do so — again, all by voice. It transcribes what you say by having people in India type down what you say into text.

The acquisition is just the latest sign that large companies are eager for ways to boost their profile on mobile phones, which people are increasingly using, now that they can enjoy things like speedy mobile browsers and more powerful mobile networks that allow more powerful applications to be used.

In a statement, Burlington, Mass.-based Nuance said it was buying Seattle-based Jott to expand its mobile offerings and that the two companies would focus on voice-to-text projects:

• The Jott Assistant service — Nuance said that the Jott service has been adopted by hundreds of thousands of users and that this provides considerable insight into what mobile users need. Nuance plans to offer Jott Assistant to mobile operators as part of its voice services portfolio, including Nuance Voicemail-to-Text.
• Improve productivity for the enterprise market.
• As used in Jott for Salesforce, Jott provides open APIs that allow for voice integration with third-party customer relationship management providers. Nuance said it will expand the CRM partner program through its existing CRM partnerships.

The company had raised at least 6.4 million, from Bain Capital, which led the second round, and Draper Richards, Ackerley Partners and Atomico, which invested in the first round.

[Update: Turns out TechFlash, the Seattle site, broke this story last night, and has more information.]

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