Localisation seen as key to emerging mobile markets

EVERYBODY KNOWS the next two billion mobile phones will come from emerging markets. The trick will be to use predictive text to raise typical users revenues, according to predictive text specialist, Tegic.

The company points to research that has shown that in India, those using Tegic's T9 predictive text input sent 29.5 messages per week whilst those who didn't sent a mere 18.1 messages.

Ray Tsuchiyama, vp for emerging markets with Tegic, reckons the key to his company's success has been supporting local languages. Out of nine major languages spoken on the Indian sub-continent, Tegic now supports seven of them.

As Tsuchiyama put it so succinctly, "There are no malls in India." So, outside the major conurbations, Tegic in conjunction with partners such as Nokia and Airtel have been employing a variety of tricks to attract potential users' attention.

These ploys include Bollywood attractions and magic shows to tempt ordinary folk to its travelling floats. Handset users are then shown how to use predictive text to send SMS messages much faster.

Tsuchiyama reckons that developed countries can learn lessons from emerging markets where operators make strenous efforts to educate subscribers into using available apps. By contrast, in developed markets 'app discovery' is a major problem and strain on resources.

The INQ was amused to learn that the Philipines government is encouraging the use of T9 predictive texting because it improves the sender's use of English - a key point in attracting employment to the region.

Europe hasn't been left out by Tegic, either. New 'local' languages to be supported shortly include Welsh and Basque. Icelandic is already there. µ

L'INQ
Tegic