Wireless

February 14, 2005
Tegic's T9 v7.2 enables texting in local Indian languages

Geetanjali Wadhwa & Pradeep Chakraborty

NEW DELHI -- Tegic Communications, a leading provider of predictive text input software and a wholly owned subsidiary of America Online Inc. (AOL), recently announced the availability of version 7.2 of its popular T9 text input software in India. Tegic's T9 software offers advanced alphabetic input prediction in multiple languages to help mobile phone and PDA users to more quickly write SMS text messages, mobile instant messages and wireless e-mails. Tegic also announced the opening of a new office in Bangalore, naming Mridul Srivastava as senior country manager, overseeing all marketing and business development activities in the region.

Specifically, T9 text input v7.2 offers enhanced multi-lingual support, making it easier for users to switch back and forth between languages when sending text messages. It also offers predictive text dictionaries for four new languages, including Bengali, Tamil, Punjabi and Urdu. These new upgrades join the additional, valuable features that were added to Tegic's T9 7 series software earlier this year to provide an increasingly robust end-user experience. They include features such as an enhanced word completion functionality and next word prediction, among others.

Local language texting in India
Ray Tsuchiyama, senior vice president, T9 Emerging Markets Group, Tegic Communications, AOL Mobile, said: "As mobile phones, and text messaging in particular, gain mainstream acceptance in India, we are delivering on our mission to make text entry faster, simpler and globally accessible. As India's mobile market continues to grow, we are setting a new standard for text input convenience and ease-of-use, thereby helping people to communicate more easily." Tegic's global customers include OEMs and handset vendors, and according to Tsuchiyama, carriers felt that its products were good for their customers. He said the company was talking to OEMs and carriers in India as well.

Commenting on the global mobile phone market, he said: "The year 2004 was a tremendously good year for the handset industry. Around 650 million handsets were shipped last year. Camera phones were shipped to Europe, while 3G phones were shipped to Japan. China continues to grow. We see growth in places like Brazil, India, Indonesia, Russia, Thailand and Vietnam. These countries still have low penetration." As for 2005, he added that lot of 3G handsets would be shipped to Europe, Japan and Korea.

Regarding the entry of T9 V7.2 in India, Tsuchiyama said the Indian mobile phone market would continue to grow. Messaging or texting in India would be linked to local languages. "People in cities use mobile phones and understand English. We wish to encourage mobile texting in local languages. Hence, the launch of predictive text input. We feel that people will be using languages such as Bengali, Hindi and Tamil. Our vision is that the Indian people must first understand predictive text input," he added. "We are looking at a comprehensive set of languages for the Indian sub-continent and differentiate our product from that of Zi." As for its focus on Indian languages, he said Tegic was currently working on the latest English language. Vernacular languages would come next. Tegic had studies that showed users who had T9 on their mobile phones sent more messages.

Mary Lou Hardy, director of marketing - T9, Tegic Communications, AOL Mobile, pointed out that instant messaging capabilities were being provided on cell phones. "Ultimately, people would need cell phones for texting," she added. Commenting on a need for specific devices for messaging, she said such devices could well come up. There could even be a requirement for even low-end devices.

She added that one of T9's thrust areas was adaptive text. It meant taking texting to personal levels that even made the phones adopt those, such as particular language, words, symbols, etc., that were the user's very personal. The latest T9 supported user database. Users could now add proper words, nouns and even alphanumerics to their database. It also supported scanning incoming messages. "This gives you the option of adding new words to the user text scenario. The latest version of T9 also supports re-order database and word completion on unique lengths. Yet another feature is next word prediction. Another feature is the manufacturer's database. The manufacturer could provide a database on phones. For example, your phone could even be a football phone," she highlighted.

New improvements in T9 v7.2

Easier switching between languages when texting: It is not uncommon for people to switch back and forth between languages when speaking or writing to friends and family. Yet, mobile users currently have to manually select or change the language in which they want to text in order to do so. The new, multi-lingual enhancement in T9 v7.2 software changes all that! It quickly recognizes the language a user is typing in and automatically predicts the word in that language the user most likely wants. With T9 v7.2, users can text concurrently in two languages without having to change their phone settings.

New T9 language support for Bengali, Punjabi, Tamil, and Urdu: To accommodate the burgeoning mobile market in India and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, Tegic has added four new languages - Bengali, Punjabi, Tamil and Urdu - to its total of 46-language database.

T9 text input is also available in Afrikaans, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean (Hangul), Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. It also supports simplified and traditional stroke-based Chinese, as well as phonetic Pinyin, BoPoMoFo, and phrasal text input.

The T9 v7.2 includes all core updates offered in Tegic's 7 series, including the following:

Smart word completion of most frequently used terms: Word completion function was introduced in the T9 v5.1 software to automatically complete words that users add to the T9 database, such as abbreviations, chat phrases, email addresses and URLs. In the 7 series, Tegic enhanced the word completion function to quickly learn which words users preferred, and to prioritize the completion of words and phrases that the users typed most often.

Next word prediction: Beyond predicting and completing words, the 7 series of T9 predicts entire phrases based on the phrases a user types most often. Phrases, such as 'Call me at home' can be entered with just a few keystrokes, helping users to type less, while actually sending more messages.

New Java version of T9 TRAINer game: Tegic has made it easier for OEMs and operators to demonstrate to consumers the ease and power of T9 text input capabilities. While a desktop version of the T9 TRAINer game has been available for consumers to try out at www.tegic.com and www.T9.com since 2003, OEMs and operators can now post a new Java-enabled T9 TRAINer game for mobile devices to their Web sites. Mobile users simply need to download the game to any Java-enabled mobile phone or PDA to quickly learn how to use T9 software via a fun, interactive game.

www.tegic.com / www.t9.com