Nokia, HP in talks for vernacular smart phones
MUMBAI: World’s largest handset vendor Nokia, which has made a killing in the Indian mobile market is in talks with Hewlett Packard (HP) to use its technology for manufacturing smart phones with Indian language capabilities. This will enable the Finnish handset maker reach out to tier II and tier III cities, where the English-speaking population is lower. The mobile subscriber base in tier II cities is growing faster than in metros where mobile penetration is much higher.
India’s booming mobile subscriber base has made the country the third largest market for Nokia. The Indian language capability will allow it to target a new segment of users for its high-end phones. Officials at HP Labs India confirmed that some cell phone manufacturers had shown interest in the technology that was launched last year. Currently, it is available for Hindi, Kannada, Bengali, Malyalam, Thai and Urdu languages.
No details were available on the pricing but indicators are that the handsets will not be very expensive. The technology developed by HP Labs India was originally intended to be bundled with HP’s computers for government tenders. With computers, a separate touch-sensitive pad (the size of a mouse pad) with a stick-on character set of the language is required. This touchpad acts as the keyboard and the user can use his hand or a stylus on the touch sensitive pad to point characters and create e-mails, word documents and even blogs in Indian languages.
For a smart phone, however, no separate touch-sensitive pad is needed. Smart phones and PDAs (such as the iPaQ by HP itself), come bundled with a stylus that can be used on the touch-sensitive screen of the PDA. Researchers at HP Labs confirmed that the technology was capable of working on a form factor smaller than the touch-sensitive pad, which is currently used with computers.
So far, with computers, the technology has not met with much commercial success. This could also be because HP has partnered with only one Bangalore-based firm, Prodigy Labs, for marketing it. So far, around 500 units are learnt to have been sold. But on the cellphone platform, the technology could have a much faster adoption rate.
The technology uses position and shape recognition to create a single character. The user first selects the base character he wishes to use and then draws the “matra” on the character with the stylus. Position recognition is used for the base character and shape recognition for the “matra”. “The total character accuracy with this technology is 98%,” said one of the researchers at the lab.
source
India’s booming mobile subscriber base has made the country the third largest market for Nokia. The Indian language capability will allow it to target a new segment of users for its high-end phones. Officials at HP Labs India confirmed that some cell phone manufacturers had shown interest in the technology that was launched last year. Currently, it is available for Hindi, Kannada, Bengali, Malyalam, Thai and Urdu languages.
No details were available on the pricing but indicators are that the handsets will not be very expensive. The technology developed by HP Labs India was originally intended to be bundled with HP’s computers for government tenders. With computers, a separate touch-sensitive pad (the size of a mouse pad) with a stick-on character set of the language is required. This touchpad acts as the keyboard and the user can use his hand or a stylus on the touch sensitive pad to point characters and create e-mails, word documents and even blogs in Indian languages.
For a smart phone, however, no separate touch-sensitive pad is needed. Smart phones and PDAs (such as the iPaQ by HP itself), come bundled with a stylus that can be used on the touch-sensitive screen of the PDA. Researchers at HP Labs confirmed that the technology was capable of working on a form factor smaller than the touch-sensitive pad, which is currently used with computers.
So far, with computers, the technology has not met with much commercial success. This could also be because HP has partnered with only one Bangalore-based firm, Prodigy Labs, for marketing it. So far, around 500 units are learnt to have been sold. But on the cellphone platform, the technology could have a much faster adoption rate.
The technology uses position and shape recognition to create a single character. The user first selects the base character he wishes to use and then draws the “matra” on the character with the stylus. Position recognition is used for the base character and shape recognition for the “matra”. “The total character accuracy with this technology is 98%,” said one of the researchers at the lab.
source
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