[Indic-computing-users] indian languange computing and the mobile phone

[Amit M. <am...@on...>]

Hi everybody,

I would like to put a few points up for discussion concerning the use of mobile phones for computing :

Device and network capability
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- The number of users of mobile phones is already greater than the PC penetration in India.
- A sizeable number of these mobile phones are Java enabled. The entry price for a Java enabled
  phone has dropped considerably (around 8K nowadays, I guess) and can be expected
  to drop further in the future. We can probably assume Java support filtering down to 
  even entry-level handsets in 2-3 years
- GPRS enabled phones can be had for as low as 5K.
- All the major operators (except BSNL) have GPRS / CDMA data capability in their networks. 
- A Java enabled phone with WAP/GPRS is largely an uncharted territory for local language computing.
- Quite a few information delivery type of services can probably be delivered via a phone. 

Device drawbacks
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- Nokia supports an Hindi interface on some of their phones
- By and large, localised interfaces and local language support is 
  ignored by all the device vendors
- No standard way to input local language text using only the numeric keypad 
  of a phone. I still have to understand how it is exactly done on the Nokia phones
  with Hindi support. 

But there is hope.......
-------------------------
- Java does provide a programming environment (however limited) on the handset.
- Java does provide for user defined fonts.
- To some extent it frees us from vendor proprietariness. The Java MIDP API being fairly open.

So my thoughts are ......
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- Does it make sense to define a way to input other language text, for example, Kannada ?
  Is anybody working on this ?
- Has anybody tried to get local languages displayed on a phone in Java? We can probably build
  a completely open local langugae messaging service using Java / GPRS.
  

  Amit