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Preethi J

Bangalore , May 21

"How would a farmer know to add a contact to phonebook?" The question asked by Mr Mohan Kumar, Head of R&D ofMotorola's Mobile Devices Software division, is significant.

Researchers at Motorola's Bangalore centre are examining usage patterns in rural India. The aim is to make the mobile a friendlier gadget to use by the rural folk.

Microsoft Research India, one of five international labs by the IT behemoth, has also noticed technophobia amongst rural community. "We are researching ways to make it a valuable and inviting tool," said Mr P Anandan, Managing Director, Microsoft Research India.

Challenges faced by rural India, include intermittent connectivity (network issues) and insufficient computing power in low-end models for tasks such as accessing Internet. "Fishermen in Kerala have shown quick adoption of mobiles and are currently using it to discuss fish markets and sales with their friends. They could benefit with access to the Internet, provided it was easier," said Mr Anandan. This would mean low-end phones needed a redesign - with text-free interfaces and added storage, he revealed.

Simplifying the menu of the mobile is an important detail, agreed Mr Kumar. At Motorola, 100 engineers are working on making a more transparent user interface. These low-tier models suited to rural India would be ready 12-18 months from now, he said.

SPEECH RECOGNITION

The absence of the keypad would be another step in simplifying a mobile. "Ninety-five per cent of tasks can be performed without a keypad," said Mr Kumar. It could be replaced with a powerful speech recognition engine.

With speech recognition, mobiles can be trained to follow voice commands. Motorola engineers are working on tailoring a speech engine for Indian languages.

Beginning with Hindi, Tamil and Gujarati, mobiles that understand commands in other languages would soon follow. A step beyond this is training the engine for different accents and inflections.

Researchers from Motorola are in the field collecting samples right now, to study this, informed Mr Kumar.

Motorola is also planning to bring out a range of `Indianised' phones, designed by engineers at Bangalore. Changes would probably be reflected in the keypad and ability to weather Indian climatic conditions.

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