Saturday, March 3, 2012

Should the Next Generation of Smartphones and Tablet Computers Be Tailored for Asian Users?

Given that India and the People’s Republic of China are now the fastest growing purchasers of the latest smartphones and tablet computers - should the next generation of these devices be more tailored to Asian users?

By: Ringo Bones

Even though these miracles of modern technology are designed in the West and then manufactured in the low-wage parts of the Far East, does it make good sense for the major “Westward Looking” consumer electronic companies start tailoring their next generation of smartphones and tablet computers for Asian users/customers? As of October 5, 2011, India and Mainland China had been shown from case studies to be slowly but continuously shown increasing demand for smartphones and tablet computers. And in these places, smartphones and tablet computers are for all intents and purposes the only way for ordinary people to access the internet.

Could we be seeing standard Mandarin and Sanskrit capable smartphones and tablet computers in the near future? Maybe, but given the internet had been very slow to adapt languages that doesn’t use the ubiquitous Roman letters, many see it as one of the obstacles in tailoring a significant number of next generation smartphones and tablet computers that could seamlessly be introduced to Indian Mainland Chinese markets, not to mention those that don’t use Roman letters in their written communications like Thai, Urdu or Pashtu.

But given retail consumerism that has been steadily shifting Eastward – as in toward the Mainland China and the Indian subcontinent, major consumer electronics firms may be ignoring this major chunk of the market at their own peril. Or maybe it could initiate a spin-off in devices that could smartly translate any written non-Roman lettered languages into something we at the deeply insular West can finally understand.

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