The Indian Government’s mandate to add local language support in the mobile devices has come as a reality check for most OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers). The norm so far had been to support a handful of regional languages along with global ones.
However, soon all smartphones, feature phones, etc. will need to support display of content in all Indian languages and provide input capability for 3 – Hindi, English and regional language of the user’s choice.
Despite the government’s mandate that came last year for regional language support in smartphones, there exists no mainstream keyboard that supports all minority languages. As per the latest mandate, every phone sold after July 1, 2017 (now October) must support local languages. This crucial step will connect millions of non-English speaking people, giving them the freedom to use the language of their choice on their mobile devices. (One might wonder why it wasn’t already that way to begin with)
This mandate is more than a good news for non-English-speaking people as they were initially left with no choice but use the default language. This will empower them to get access, transact, acquire and share information in the language they are most comfortable in.
Soon after this mandate was out, mobile phone manufacturers were seen looking out for facilitators who can provide language support in such a short span of time.
The government realised that language support is indeed a complicated activity and increased the deadline from July to October 2017.
KeyPoint Technologies alone saw a steep rise in the number of requests coming in for language support, in the last few months. Good part is- while other providers had to start from scratch- get linguists, build technology; KPT has been in this business since over a decade now. Hence could easily fulfil the requirements in the shortest span.
This step taken by the government has not only given local languages a boost, but also empowered every citizen of the country to make maximum use of their smartphones to get things done.
