The Case For Why Google Is Doomed With Sudden Shift to Mobile

Here's why Google is doomed as the world rapidly shifts to mobile from desktops. Get read to say "Ask Siri" instead of "Google It"

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Why Google Could 'Disappear' in 5 Years

My discussion today on @SquawkStreet about the challenges mobile presents to $GOOG:



[Long YHOO & AAPL]

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Why Does Marissa Mayer Consider Siri the "Perfect Search Engine"?

Marissa Mayer has some big choices ahead of her in search coming up between now and March when the Microsoft deal expires. What will she do and why does she think Siri is the Perfect Search Engine?

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What's Going to be Apple's Next Killer Product? Not a New iPhone - Artificial Intelligence

What will be the biggest new Apple (AAPL) product introduced in the next 5 years?

In the last 5 years, we’ve seen the introduction of the iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and Apple TV.

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What's Up With 'Big Data'?

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- One of the myths of the last two years in technology is that "big data" is going to allow all these amazingly personalized services for us.

It hasn't happened.

Katie Roof, a journalist, tweeted the other day: "I get random roofing companies following me on Twitter... Roof is really my name..."

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Why Apple Maps and Siri Required Apple To Break Its 'No Beta' Rule

Apple Maps isn't like MobileMe. It's like Siri. Both required a lot of user data and breaking Apple's "no beta" policy.

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New Video: Trading Apple's Big Q3 Miss

Here's my appearance this morning on CNBC's Squawk on the Street discussing Apple's miss last night.



[Long AAPL]

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Why Android Users Are Clueless and What that Means for Apple and Google

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Apple(AAPL_) took a few shots at Google(GOOG_) last week during their WWDC keynote.'


Even Siri poked fun at Google's names for their different versions of their operating systems (Ice Cream Sandwich, Cupcake and FroYo): "Who came up with these names, Ben & Jerry's?"


But the really stunning stat to come out at the conference was from Scott Forstall, who is the head of Apple's mobile software. He pointed out that more than 80% of Apple's iOS users were running the latest version of iOS. However, only 7% of Google Android users are running the latest version of their software.

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Why Apple Is Smart to Double Down on Siri

Apple‘s (AAPL) CEO, Tim Cook, spoke on Tuesday night at the All Things D conference about a wide range of subjects.


One area he was pressed on by Walt Mossberg was Siri, Apple’s voice-automated personal assistant that comes as part of the new iPhone 4S.

“When it works, it works really well,” said Mossberg. “But a lot of times, it doesn’t work.”



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What's Craig Mundie Been Smoking?

Microsoft thinks Siri is just a function of good Apple Marketing.

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What Is Next For Apple's iAd?

Apple has to decide whether it wants to play in the ad world or not.  Eddy Cue will now make that decision.

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Eric Schmidt Doesn't Believe For A Second That Siri Is A Threat To Google

Despite making a big deal about it on Friday in his answers to the US Senate, you shouldn't think Eric Schmidt or any Google exec is fretting yet about Siri as a threat - even though they should.

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More Proof That Siri Is Intended to Be A Google Killer

More details on why Siri is a Google Killer.

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Why Apple Wants to Make TVs

Jobs' biography makes it clear why Apple wants to make its own TV sets

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Why Siri Is a Google Killer

Siri seemed like a minor feature introduction as part of the iPhone 4S. It might just kill Google in 4 years time.

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Why Apple Won't Buy Nuance

BY Eric Jackson , On Monday October 24, 2011, 1:00 pm EDT

Siri is a hit with the Apple (AAPL) iPhone 4S. It's now the star of mainstream TV commercials. It works better than any voice recognition system I've seen in the past 11 years ... and I used to work for a start-up in the industry 10 years ago.

What's been an even bigger hit since Siri was announced is Nuance's (NUAN) stock: It's up 37% in the past month vs. 7% for the Nasdaq. Nuance is the voice rec technology behind Siri.

Many have speculated that Apple (AAPL) will now buy Nuance, because Siri has shown itself to be a hit and Apple would want to keep Nuance's speech rec technology out of Google's (GOOG) hands.

I disagree.

I don't think Apple will buy Nuance. Why?

Apple bought Siri in April 2010. The company has likely known since then that Siri would be a hit. Until the last month, Nuance's stock has traded between $20 and $15. In July 2010, Nuance's stock traded below $15, making it worth a little over $4 billion instead of its current market cap close to $8 billion.

If Apple was convinced Siri would be a game-changer, why not buy Nuance back then? Yet Apple was instead entering into licensing agreements with Nuance, with the plans to bring Siri to market in a future iPhone.

I suspect that Apple negotiated strict covenants into any licensing deal with Nuance. Think of it: The deal was a huge coup for Nuance. Not only that, with Apple bringing Siri to market in a future iPhone, Nuance would know that this would be the biggest marketing initiative for the voice recognition industry ever. It will sell a lot of voice rec licenses in the next decade because of Siri.

So what would Apple have gotten in exchange from Nuance by partnering with it? Likely patent licenses and strict protections if Nuance is ever acquired. No way Apple is going to leave itself vulnerable if Google buys Nuance.

If you're Nuance, you sign whatever deal Apple puts in front of you because ... it's Apple.

What about the people who say Google might buy Nuance and replicate Siri? Sorry -- the magic behind Siri doesn't live at Nuance, it lives in Siri, the AI piece behind the technology. Nuance is the speech rec part. There are a lot of smart people at Nuance, but this is the commodity part of the application.

Siri is a perfect example of what Apple calls its place sitting at the intersection of the humanities and technology.

I know the folks at Nuance. They're nice. But they don't live at this intersection (except for maybe a few apps people). The company is a roll-up of basically every speech rec company that's existed in the past 10 years.

I'm not sure if I will short Nuance, but I do plan on selling some premium on this recent move up.

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Be Wary of Nuance

By Eric Jackson, Senior Contributor09/28/11 - 06:00 AM EDT


NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- I used to work in the voice recognition industry. That was 11 years ago.

Back then, voice rec was often touted by many as the next big thing.

Guess what, it's still the next big thing.

There were some great people who worked in the industry. Mike McCue started Tellme which eventually got sold to Microsoft(MSFT_) after raising a boatload of money from high-prestige Valley VCs. He's now the founder of popular private iPad reading company Flipboard. McCue is so admired; he's on the Twitter board.

Therefore, when I hear about how the Siri personal assistant is going to be integrated into the next version of the Apple(AAPL_) iPhone 5, I'm excited as a user of the technology, but I would be cautious about running out to buy Nuance(NUAN_) just because it's in the voice rec space.

You need to recognize that the incredible bounce Nuance shares -- 10% in the last five trading sessions -- is all about iPhone 5. And you probably be positioning yourself for an inevitable pullback in Nuance shares after the iPhone 5 launch, rather than piling in.

Nuance is a huge industry roll-up. Back when I was in the industry, there were about a dozen speech recognition vendors (who built software to recognize people's voices). Today, there's basically one: Nuance. SpeechWorks, Nuance, and Lernout & Hauspie all got rolled up into one.

As that happened, Nuance got a lot of extraneous businesses. Like medical transcriptions. There's a big part of Nuance that just involves saving doctors' transcriptions and sending them to Bangladesh every night to be typed out.

So, when people get excited about Nuance stock today, it's usually because they assume that Apple will buy them. However, Apple likely doesn't want to be in the Bangladesh transcription business.

What if Google(GOOG_) bought Nuance? It's possible. Google has been doing more and more in speech rec over the last few years and have hired a number of talented people from the industry. I suspect they feel they have enough good people in the area for what they need.

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