Possibly as a quick way to upgrade Siri to compete with Microsoft’s new Cortana speech recognising assistant, Apple has acquired speech recognition company Novauris, who for a while have been working on speech spftware that allows the user to work offline – meaning that in the future Siri could be used without an active internet connection.
Novauris also holds historical patents on features Siri already uses – yet another example of Apple buying up patents they have already technically violated to avoid legal action. Smart. Novauris appear to have not minded, and why should they, since they’re now getting all that Apple money. Their experts have already been working with Apple for some time, so obviously they’ve been firm friends for the duration. Nobody knows exactly what they’re working on though.
If Siri is upgraded to process information without an internet connection it would be the first digital assistant to accomplish said feat. Apple is also pushing the iOS to work better on the move, in applications such as the new CarPlay system, which allows users to have an Apple-oriented experience in the car, where the internet isn’t easy to come by from sources like wi-fi that are not provided by mobile network service providers, such as 3G or 4G.