August was a busy month for Indian languages in digital media. There was a sudden spurt of articles related to this subject.
Next 300 million internet users in India won’t use English
Google India managing director Rajan Anandan says the next phase of growth for the Internet in India will be driven by local-language content.
I think that we’ve already seen good growth (of mobile), but we’re going to see a lot more happening soon. One of the obstacles is definitely language, and with more local language content, you’re going to see a lot of growth. This will also be helped along with improvements in speech to text, and voice controls. We have 150 million Internet users, and the next 300 million won’t use English. That’s why we’re working on Indic languages, which is the key to driving growth…more.
Mozilla Firefox In Tamil
In a development that brings out the online convergence of love for Tamil and passion for free software, Mozilla Firefox – a free, open-source web browser, considered one of the most secure – will soon be available in Tamil.
A group of over 10 volunteers who have been translating the browser menu and other settings into Tamil, for over a year now…more.
Dutch Navigation App TomTom in 9 Indian Languages
The app enables the user to search for nearest landmarks and direct the user to the location.
Features like, Advanced lane guidance, spoken street names help in keeping the users eye on the road. The spoken street names will be offered in both Indian English and UK English while normal spoken instructions are available in nine different Indian languages viz. Hindi, Punjabi, Gujarati, Malayalam, Tamil, Kannada, Oriya, Marathi, Bengali…more.
Google Search by Hindi Handwrite Input for Android Now Enabled
Targeting the huge Indian population, Google has recently introduced the latest feature on Google Search for Android smartphones and tablets. The feature now enables user to write on the touchscreen Android devices in Hindi…more.
What Is Missing?
Getting data on internet usage in India is still very difficult. You get high level numbers but not the detailed ones like the what you see from the US and Europe.
It would be very useful to get know how many internet users are in Tier-I, Tier-II, Tier-II towns of India (by each town name). I think only Google India is in a position to publish how many of their users (which is almost 100% of internet users in India!) are searching for language content, but they don’t release those numbers.
TRAI releases some vague reports, never found them to be very specific.
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