Earlier today, I reported that Seattle startup Jott had been acquired. At the time, I didn't know the purchase price or the buyer. All I knew was that a large communications company had recently gobbled up Jott. But some details are starting to emerge -- thanks in part to the sleuthing of our faithful readers. 

After much chatter on TechFlash today about possible acquirers, a reader this evening discovered a pretty interesting tidbit on the Web site of one of Jott's venture backers. Ackerley Partners spells it out pretty clearly, noting that Jott was acquired by Nuance Communications last month.

That makes a heck of a lot of sense because Nuance -- a Burlington, Mass.-based company with revenue of more than $900 million last year  -- is a leader in speech recognition technologies.

Jott, as was pointed out earlier today, has developed a voice-to-text technology that converts voice notes into text that can be delivered via email or text message.

Nuance, with more than 6,000 employees, also has been highly acquisitive in recent months. And it already has operations in Seattle thanks in part to its $180 million purchase last year of Bellevue mobile software company SnapIn Software.

In 2007, Nuance purchased the T9 text input software -- originally developed by Seattle's Tegic Communications -- from AOL. More recently, it completed an acquisition of mobile search and advertising company Zi Corp.

Earlier this year, Nuance announced that private equity firm Warburg Pincus had invested $175 million that it could use for possible M&A activity.

Nuance couldn't be reached for comment, and Jott CEO John Pollard declined to comment earlier today on our initial report.

But an announcement of the deal is expected as early as Tuesday.

Jott raised about $7 million from Ackerley Partners, Bain Capital, Draper Richards and others. We're still trying to track down the purchase price, so if anyone has clues on that, please let us know.

UPDATE: Nuance officially announced the acquisition of Jott today, saying that it will continue to support Jott Assistant, Jott Voicemail and Jott for Salesforce. Here's the press release:

BURLINGTON, Mass. & SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) today announced it has expanded its Mobile Division voice services portfolio with the acquisition of Jott. Jott is the innovator behind the popular Jott Assistant, the simple and easy-to-use service that enables users to create notes, set reminders and appointments, send email and text messages, and post to their favorite web services – all by voice, from any device.

“Jott’s voice-to-text offerings have experienced a groundswell of adoption and positive industry recognition since the company’s inception, and we’re thrilled about the opportunity to expand our market reach and our voice services portfolio,” said Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager, Nuance Mobile. “Together we will deliver a range of new services to our mobile operator and enterprise customers.”

The combined Nuance and Jott teams will focus on several key voice-to-text initiatives:

• The innovative Jott Assistant service has been adopted by hundreds of thousands of users, providing vast insight into the demands of today’s mobile users. To further extend the power of Jott across the mobile mass market, Nuance plans to package and offer Jott Assistant to mobile operators as part of its voice services portfolio, including Nuance Voicemail-to-Text.
• By combining its easy-to-use voice services with email, text messaging and a variety of web services, Jott’s service has advanced mobile productivity in the enterprise market. Nuance, together with its Enterprise Unified Communications partners, will offer a secure, highly scalable and differentiated Enterprise package including Nuance Voicemail-to-Text, Messaging, and Collaboration.
• As used in Jott for Salesforce, Jott provides open APIs that allow for voice integration with third party CRM providers and other critical enterprise applications that require mobile access. Nuance will continue to mainstream and expand the CRM partner program through its existing CRM partnerships, enabling enterprise application providers to better meet the needs of the evolving professional mobile market.

“We’ve seen dramatically increased demand for our mobile voice solutions, because they offer real business value, are easy to deploy, and are a delight to use,” said John Pollard, co-founder, Jott. “Nuance has consistently delivered groundbreaking mobile applications to billions of people worldwide. Our combined expertise will bring innovative and differentiated voice services to a variety of markets with tremendous scale.”

All of Jott’s services, including Jott Assistant, Jott Voicemail and Jott for Salesforce, will remain available, and existing customers will experience no interruptions in service. For more information and to access Jott services, visit www.jott.com.

John Cook is co-founder of TechFlash. Follow him on Twitter @johnhcook.