Jun 7, 2006, 14:00 GMT
Kolkata, June 7 (IANS) Tegic, the wholly owned subsidiary of America Online Inc (AOL), is aiming to capture India's growing market of short message services (SMSs) in regional languages.
The company, engaged in developing embedded software that enhances communication in small mobile devices, is looking at the potential SMS market in the semi-urban and rural India, Mridul Srivastava, senior country manager of AOL's wireless division, said here Wednesday.
'With the increased mobile penetration in India, the SMS market in India is poised to grow to 180 billion by 2010 from 12.3 billion in 2004. In value terms the market size is Rs.6.95 billion now. The availability of the vernacular SMS will lead to a faster growth of the market,' he said.
The company, which has already introduced the Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi, Tamil and Urdu versions of the T9 text input software, launched its Bengali version Wednesday. The Gujarati and Kannada versions will also be launched shortly, the company officer said.
'We are holding talks with original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of mobile sets to include the software in their handsets. There is huge opportunity since an industry study estimates that 29 million new handsets will be added in India in 2006,' Srivastava said.
© 2006 Indo-Asian News Service
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