What Happened to Nuance Integration in iOS 5?

Most of the widely reported rumors for iOS 5 came true in one form or another; however, one big prediction was completely missing. What happened to Nuance integration?

TechCrunch, the site that broke the rumor, had this to say:

We're still looking into this, but here's the latest we're hearing. At least three of our original sources on this were "very surprised" not to hear anything during the keynote today. One noted that leading up to the last minute, they were sure new, elaborate voice features in iOS 5 were going to be announced on stage. It didn't happen. Apple has been known to pull things at the last second. But this may go deeper.


TechCrunch suggests that Nuance and Apple may still be in negotiations. Nuance has a reputation for being a tough negotiator and Apple may need their technology. There has been evidence of Nuance integration already found in Mac OS X Lion and it's rumored that Apple's new data center will run their voice recognition technology. Perhaps Nuance is playing hardball with Apple?

Interestingly, the Chief Mobile Technology Architect at Nuance was in the audience at WWDC suggesting the something is definitely going on. Robert Scoble heard from a source that the Siri integration just wasn’t done in time for the presentation.

Both Scoble and TechCrunch believe that Nuance technology will still integrated into iOS 5 before it launches this fall.

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