In a transaction that is scheduled to close during the 3rd quarter of 2013, Nuance Communications is acquiring Tweddle Connect, a Seattle-based company whose technology powers the Entune™ “Infotainment” system that graces a growing number of Lexus and Toyota nameplates. Nuance’s grand plan is to make Dragon Drive into the speech processing platform that empowers your car’s Virtual Personal Assistant.

Nuance had made highly visible headway into automobiles by integrating a broad range of products, software and services into the automotive and telematics domains. According to the press release, the company’s products are “shipping in more than 20 million cars each year.” That includes embedded voice, text-to-speech and natural language understanding solutions that are integrated into onboard systems in selected models of  Audi, BMW, Chrysler, Ford, General Motors, Hyundai, Toyota and many other automakers’ innovations.

Nuance’s Dragon Drive speech-enable long-standing “favorites” among in-car activities, including voice dialing, message dictation, navigation, local business search, music search and climate control. Tweddle Group for its part has been very active in developing and deploying  “connected services” solutions for both drivers and passengers in cars. The 58 year-old company, based in London, is best known for information solutions and documentation for automatove OEMs and their suppliers, supported through offices in Detroit, Brussels, Koln, Torino and Shanghai. Its Seattle-based Tweddle Group Technologies (TGT) took on employees from Microsoft, Amazon, T-Mobile, AT&T, and Real Networks to aggregate and offer a blend of third-party content and streaming services, including Bing, iHeart Radio, INRIX traffic, Movietickets.com, OpenTable, and Pandora.

The need for a hands-free, speech-based user interface to control Entune™ had been addressed by Nuance and Bellevue, Washington-based VoiceBox. Together with audio specialists Harman Becker and automotive parts supplier DENSO. It will be interesting to see whether or how Nuance’s acquisition of Tweddle Connect has an impact on VoiceBox, which has spent nearly two decades concentrating on getting a speech-based user interface to work well in cars. As for TGT parent, Tweddle Group, it has $80 million in additional cash on its balance sheet and can return to its core business of providing information infrastructure software and services “to support a brand-specific consumer relationship with their vehicle, the dealer, and the automotive manufacturer.”

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Tags: Nuance, customer experience, Mobile, personal virtual assistants, Connected Car, Telematics, Toyota