That second guessed message

Mridul Shrivastava

COMMUNICATION: Predictive text software for cellphones gets even more intuitive, as numbers rise.

The next time you key in "Namaste" on a text message (through your mobile), remember to use T9.

T-whaat? T9 is a predictive text feature of the software loaded on mobile phones. To greet someone with the abovementioned salutation, you'd have to hit the keys 21 times. With T9, that's just six key hits.

Tegic Communications, a wholly-owned subsidiary of America Online, has several such tidbits about its T9 Text Input software.

Sure enough, Mridul Shrivastava, senior country manager, AOL Mobile, is buoyed by a recent market research that assures him that of the 63 per cent mobile owners who send text messages (in India), 25 per cent use predictive text.

"The best part," he enthuses, is that "T9 users send an average of 70 messages per week when compared to non-T9 users, who send 18 messages per week."

India is the fastest growing telecom market in the world, and Shrivastava can barely be faulted for comparing the current SMS boom in the Indian market to Europe's texting surge six years ago.

But popularity has not translated into any corresponding revenue increase. By AOL Mobile's arithmetic, messaging services "" which account for almost 60 per cent of value-added revenues for operators "" have not grown in line with mobile penetration in India.

Nearly 60 million people in India now walk around with active cellphones, with some two million joining the crowd every month, according to the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI).

If that's not enough, chew on these figures. "Analysts predict that India will see a rise from 12.3 billion messages in 2004 to 180 billion messages by 2010," says Shrivastava.

The obvious question: what will drive this growth? "Messages sent using T9 predictive text, but in regional languages. AOL is already talking to mobile operators to promote regional text messsages."

While English messaging is still the prevalent form, AOL is willing to bet his money on regional languages. The challenge, after all, is in going deeper into the market than language barriers would allow.

"The way I see it," says the AOL man, "the T9 text input software for Hindi, followed by Punjabi, Bengali, Tamil and Urdu, are set to become a craze in respective regions."

That's just routine business for AOL, which provides T9 software in 51 global languages across the world. And it's been a craze alright.

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JUST PREDICT

PREDICTIVE TEXT is an input technology used in mobile phones. It lets words be formed by a single keypress for each letter, as opposed to the multiple keypress approach used in the older generation of mobile phones. It works via active reference to a dictionary of commonly used words

The xT9 predictive option (the latest stuff from AOL Wireless) works with PDAs and smartphones that have handwriting recognition or Qwerty keyboards. It helps by analysing the user's writing style and guessing the words. AOL intends to develop a similar application for the lower-end models too

The latest version of Text Input (version 7.3) can back up all the words added to the dictionary. So, all the slang which only your friends understand will forever be a part of your T9 dictionary

It also supports bilingual texting, so you can change language halfway through a message text without needing to select a different dictionary. It can even learn and then predict the most used words and phrases

The very latest: "Next-letter prediction" and 'regional error correction' "" for when you accidentally press the wrong key