Nuance Communications, Inc. (NUAN)

[Not_Bill_Oneil]

A little more research...

is warranted for a company like this. What a great space they are in. And, yes, they are in a great position in this space - for now.

Yet, this is an important space for many applications in the future, so you have to think about competition right now.

Microsoft and IBM are investing heavily in speech recognition, and Vista has a new feature, Windows Speech Recognition, that sounds basically like a very similar product to Nuance's, however, it also lets you control the operating system. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/features/foreveryone/speech.mspx

On that alone, I think some caution and patience is warranted, before buying shares of Nuance. And I think with Vista's release, this may be one reason why NUAN shares might be a little soft for a little while (aside from market action).

On the flip side, speech recognition software needs faassst processors in order to work seamlessly, and with the release of Vista, new dual core chips, and new machines, as well as faster networks, there will be more people ready for it later this year - ASR. Will have to see if people eventually end up using Microsoft or Nuance, and whether businesses (call centers, mobile, banking & medical apps, etc.) use Nuance, MSFT, Big Blue, or others like Phillip's SpeechMagic, etc.

That said, Nuance has had some key acquisitions, and seem to be heading in the right direction. I'd also however, look more into their business solutions, such as mobile applications - they need some wins here. Without these, I think it says speech products are not ready for these types of uses (due to background and other noise/different microphones), not quite yet. Maybe it's a little early still on uses like this.

Also, although their consumer products are available at certain retail locations, it's not like they command a lot of shelf space, in fact, only very little. And I just noticed, Cramer said triple sell on this one just last week and said no, no, no to speech recognition - but don't know why.

I'll be watching this close and doing more research. People who have used NaturallySpeaking like the product (I think word of mouth / internet will help). Nuance already has many partnering relationships. The weekly and monthly charts are setting up nice, and it already has good institutional support, and triple digit percent earnings acceleration. Whenever it crosses the $15 mark, it will have already started running, however, at that point it will show up on more screens that monitor larger issues trading over that level - thereby adding more interest.

May have to attend SpeechTEK West next month to see some related stuff.

GL & GT.