AOL's Wireless Division Launches Bengali Text Input Software

Tegic, a unit of AOL's wireless division, has launched Bengali version 7.4 of the T9 text input software.

This T9 text input software's purpose is to help cell phone and mobile device users to write SMS text messages in 55 languages.

The company seems interested in the potential SMS market in the semi-urban and rural India.

“With the increased mobile penetration in India, the SMS market in India is poised to grow to 180 billion by 2010 from 12.3 billion in 2004. In value terms the market size is Rs.6.95 billion now. The availability of the vernacular SMS will lead to a faster growth of the market," Mridul Srivastava, senior country manager of AOL's wireless division said on Wednesday.
"We are close to launching several new solutions like mobile search, mobile navigator and text output softwares," Srivastava said.

"The major growth in new users of mobile will come from B and C class towns. And, there we are optimistic because users in smaller towns prefer to send SMS in local languages," Srivastava said.

Tegic has already launched the Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi, Tamil and Urdu versions of the T9 text input software. According to the company's officials, the Gujarati and Kannada versions will also be launched shortly.

Currently, a demo of the software is available for licensing to handset makers.

Tegic also plans to launch several mobile data services in India.