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

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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