'The biggest rise in cellphone subscription has been from the B and C circles'

What is the future strategy for T9 in India?

The biggest rise in cellphone subscription has been from the B and C
circles. I am not talking about the farmer in Bihar, I am talking about Pune or
Chandigarh, Lucknow, and outskirts of Hyderabad. The profile of the person we
hope to reach would be a shopkeeper in Lucknow, Hindi speaking and not very
technology savvy. We will, of course, promote T9 in vernacular languages in the
big cities.

What are some of the steps taken to promote T9 in India?

We are also doing programs around education, awareness and promotion that
has been lacking. New apps and technologies are coming out everyday, but many of
them are not being adopted fast enough. Recently, we have had many programs
working with carriers and independently, hiring your people as implants. These
implants sit in a cellphone store, and educate prospective buyers in how to use
T9.

What seems to be the future of the 12-key mobile device and how
is Tegic dealing with the future trends?

In the world of handsets, the volume will be the 12-key device. However,
there are new types of smartphones and PDAs that are coming out with qwert, half
qwerty and many other types of keypads. But with more keys, more mistakes would
be made. The new xT9 extends the T9 technology to adapt to the writing style.
But, that does not mean we expect the qwerty phones to come in the market in
huge numbers. These phones will still be used mainly by the IT savvy
professional in the big cities. So, we are trying to address two different
markets in India at the same time.

Are there any learnings from the China market for India?

I think India will increase subscription to the levels of China. This will
happen. Carries in China have a great VAS revenue, non-voice is closer to 20%,
while in India it is just a few percentage points. In spite of the years of many
applications in the China market, SMS still dominates. And, still it is the
killer app for China market. So, the faster the operators in India can
accelerate messaging, it will be better for them.

Any plans for products other than T9?

One is based on search. More and more phones are becoming a repository for a
lot of things like pictures, SMSs, documents, address, lot of data, downloaded
clips and ringtones, music. Searching and ordering these and navigating them
will be a big issue. We are thinking to explore that world. Currently, we are
looking at doing this at the phone level, and in the future we will also look to
the world outside the cellphone as well; eg the Internet, or the enterprise
network.

Are you working with voice recognition technologies?

Yes, we are exploring that. But there are different levels of voice. We are
trying to aim at the right level for the user. There are areas called command
and control in which you say something and the menu changes to the desired one.
Then there is dictation, which is much harder.

Alok Singh

aloksi@cybermedia.co.in