Burlington, Mass.-based Nuance Communications, which creates speech-recognition software for multiple platforms, including mobile phones, reported a fourth-quarter profit based on improved operating margins. The company’s stock jumped $1.28, or about 17 percent, today to close at $8.78 a share. Q4 profits totaled $22 million, or 9 cents a share, compared with a loss of $3.4 million, or 2 cents a share in the prior year. Revenues jumped 41 percent to $253.4 million, compared to the year ago period when it reported $179.9 million in revenues. Release. Transcript.

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Mobile Results: Nuance’s mobile revenues hit a new record as the company benefited from an “active product cycles for handset OEMs and especially from new agreements with Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and other large mobile product manufacturers.” In addition, the company saw consumer demand for its Nuance Mobile Care solutions, which launched in the quarter, and complements the acquisition of SNAPin.

Softness going forward: In the company’s conference call, Nuance’s Chairman and CEO Paul Ricci said the slowdown expected by multiple handset manufacturers will also likely affect Nuance. In a transcript, he said: “We also assume that demand for mobile devices is going to be under pressure this year as our comments indicated and that will result in pressure on our royalty reports from our automotive and handset manufacture customers. We expect this to be a difficult year in terms of price pressure from those companies as they seek to address their own financial issues. Last year was also a fairly difficult year of price pressures from them so that may be somewhat of a continuation of a trend, but it could worsen….On the other hand we are deploying mobile services this year that will bring growth on line and for which we have committed contracts, so we will see some growth of that. Since we can’t say in advance what the consumer reception to those services will be primarily through carriers, we have to be cautious.”