Outside of IBM and Microsoft, which have their own enterprise-level speech projects, most independent speech companies (including Scansoft, Dictaphone and Dragon) have been acquired by Nuance Communications. In terms of PC World reviews, we know Nuance primarily for its Dragon Naturally Speaking programme, which lets you use natural speech to input text into or control your PC. It struggles a little with the Kiwi accent, but these days it works pretty well (check out our latest review here).

Nuance also sells behind the scenes service software used by telephone companies and call centres (and Auckland's Co-op Taxis, if you've every had to stand there dorkily and say "ready now" to their automated system).

Nuance's latest acquisition, announced yesterday, is VoiceSignal Technologies (for $US293 million, finance fans).

As someone who hates trying to surf the web via a tiny cellphone keypad, or even txting, I quite like the cut of VoiceSignal's gib, at least on paper. Nuance, which numbers Vodafone, Nokia, Motorola and BlackBerry maker RIM among its customers, says VoiceSignal will help it expand products in the following four areas:

Mobile search - Nuance and VoiceSignal have pioneered voice-based access to the vast search capabilities of the mobile Internet. Through simple commands and one-button ease, mobile users are afforded simple, convenient access to directory assistance, music, games, weather forecasts, news, sports scores, stock quotes, maps and at time special offers from advertisers.

Mobile messaging - There were more than one trillion mobile email, SMS or text messages sent last year and the number is expected to grow rapidly in 2007. Nuance and VoiceSignal offer solutions that allow people to dictate a message into a mobile device rather than relying on slow, "thumbs-only" input such as predictive text, triple tap or small QWERTY keypads.

Mobile command and control - Voice-activated dialing and name dialing solutions can eliminate the ten to twenty "taps" or button pushes that are typically required to dial a phone number or access a certain command.

Consumer safety - Nuance and VoiceSignal are committed to providing solutions that make it easy and safe for people to receive text messages on a mobile phone, even when their hands or eyes are otherwise occupied. In addition, the companies will further pioneer capabilities of "spoken" names, menus, emails, Web pages or other content, making it ideal for hands-free, eyes-free use in light of emerging legislation on the use of mobile phones in automobiles.