Issues & Challenges for Enabling Mobile web in Indian Languages
Swaran Lata , Somnath Chandra , Prashant Verma
India continues to be one of the world’s fastest-growing telecommunications market due to a progressive regulatory regime , huge capital outlays for network expansion by operators , reductions in tariffs and cost of handsets. For the India mobile market ,voice services constitute nearly 88 percent of the total revenue. For non-voice or data services which include SMS, Internet browsing and multimedia, year-on –year growth was 33 percent over 2008. Mobile media has increasingly becoming the preferred medium of communication. Accessing internet through mobile is seen as the future, hence enabling Indian languages on the mobile with parallel efforts enhancing the languages content on the web coupled by the development of various standards supporting these initiatives and our participation in such a global platforms is the ultimate long term goal. Interoperability is the key issue so that the dissemination of multilingual news and information can be handled seamlessly across service providers and variety of mobile available in the market. Perceiving the cellular phone to be the agent of change for inclusive growth, the challenge lies in enhancing the variety of the mobile applications and their localization, which in turn will accelerate the growth of mobile business in the country.