Noterize, which was a fairly popular note-taking app that had been featured by Apple in its Iconic ad, had mysteriously disappeared from the App Store a little while ago. TUAW is today reporting that the absence was because Noterize had been acquired by Nuance.

The Noterize app was particularly well known for its fairly innovative and intuitive annotation and markup features, which you can still view in their promotional video here. Perhaps the most obvious reason for this acquisition could be because Nuance is interesting in releasing their own note-taking app with similar annotation and markup features and have them complemented by voice recognition and dictation. Users could then create a note on a PDF and dictate the contents of the note rather than type it out.

This acquisition of Noterize comes after a number of news pieces over the past few weeks relating to talk over Apple doing a deal with Nuance to feature voice recognition and dictation in iOS 5. There was even the supposedly leaked screenshots of an internal iOS 5 build that showed settings that seemed to back up the rumors.

[Via TUAW]