Tegic Communications, a wholly owned subsidiary of America Online, Inc., today announced that Datang Mobile Communications Equipment Co. Ltd. (Datang) has licensed T9 Text Input software for Chinese Stroke, Pinyin, and Phrasal Text Input, plus English.
Datang will integrate T9 Text Input into a new line of 3G handset platforms for OEM handset manufacturers. By making text entry on mobile phones quick and easy, T9 Text Input enables the use of text-based mobile services such as SMS (short messaging service) and e-mail.
By incorporating T9 Text Input into mobile communications products, companies are solving the fundamental problem of how to quickly and easily type and send messages. Although each key on a telephone keypad can be interpreted in multiple ways-a single press on the "5" key could be "J," "K," or "L"-T9 Text Input uses an internal database to automatically scan possible variations to determine the correct word. For example, entering the word "call" into a mobile phone will take just four key presses with T9 Text Input rather than ten key presses required by conventional "multi-tap" text entry. In addition, T9 Text Input adapts to users by automatically capturing their unique text messaging language–such as slang, abbreviations, symbols, mixed alpha-numerics, emoticons, URLs and e-mail addresses–in its dictionary so that users need not multi-tap them with each use.
T9 Text Input is currently available in 42 languages, including Afrikaans, Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean (Hangul), Latvian, Lithuanian, Malay, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. T9 Text Input supports Simplified and Traditional stroke-based Chinese, as well as phonetic Pinyin, BoPoMoFo, and Phrasal Text Input. Language support is continually expanding.