Micromax has signed a deal with the makers of Panini keypad, and will soon incorporate these keypads in their phones.
A Micromax spokesperson confirmed the news and said, “The management is excited about the possibility of this new technology, and the company is working towards integrating these in some of the future handsets.”
He added, “Support for Indian languages will open a new market for value added services and content consumption as people currently do not use them as they are not familiar with English language.”
Although he did not disclose model details or time of launch, he said that it is a work in progress and that we will see the results soon.
It is widely anticipated that the Panini virtual keypad will be a big step in making local language support practical for people. Till now, people needed to type in Roman script to get a word in Hindi or any other regional language. For example, if one wanted to write ‘grape’ in Hindi, he or she had to type ‘angoor’ in English, which is not really comfortable for a person who is not well-versed in English.
What Panini does is to display on a virtual keypad the letters on the physical keypad that correspond to letters in Hindi (or any other language), making it possible for people to type in regional languages.