Nuance Communications has acquired MacSpeech, a provider of speech recognition solutions for Macs. The agreement will allow Nuance to extend the Dragon NaturallySpeaking family of products to the growing community of Mac users as a native Mac application, according to Peter Mahoney, senior vice president and general manager for Dragon, Nuance Communications.

“In 2008, MacSpeech licensed our underlying Dragon dictation technology to deliver MacSpeech Dictate, and the demand has only continued to grow, fueled recently by our recent launch of Dragon Dictation for the iPhone. MacSpeech’s knowledge of the Mac platform and its deep understanding of Mac users, coupled with our decades-long experience with speech recognition and the popular Dragon brand, will allow us to provide the world’s best dictation technology in a solution that is 100% Mac," he adds.

Through the acquisition of MacSpeech, Nuance will be positioned to accelerate the growth opportunity for MacSpeech products by adding additional research and development support, Dragon brand recognition, marketing support, and distribution channels, according to Mahoney. In addition, the acquisition presents more growth opportunities for Dragon NaturallySpeaking with new audiences and on new devices, he adds.

Nuance recently launched the Dragon Dictation and Dragon Search apps for the iPhone. For more info on the acquisition go to http://www.nuance.com/macspeech .