Nokia In Talks With HP For Phones With Local Language Capability
By Nikhil Pahwa - Wed 11 Jul 2007 10:55 PM PST
Nokia is in talks with Hewlett Packard for developing smart phones with Indian language capabilities, reports ET. HP Labs apparently have developed a technology that allows for text in Hindi, Kannada, Bengali, Malayalam, Thai and Urdu to be entered using a touchpad. This was was intended for use with HP computers for government tenders, but Nokia believes that such technology can be implemented in phones, and help garner marketshare in the Tier II cities.
Now we know that AOL owned Tegic is developing their xT9 dictionary for Indian languages as well, for smart phones. The T9 (not xT9) supports at least 8 Indian languages. Smart phones with the added technology are likely to be expensive, so it probably won’t give Nokia much of an edge unless it can bring costs down. Frankly, voice is a leveler, across platforms, across media.
