Karachi – The latest version of Google’s smartphone operating system, Android 6.0 Marshmallow features Urdu language support, is what landmark breakthrough for Pakistan’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector.
Earlier in September, the Silicon Valley-based technology giant unveiled two of its new ‘Nexus’ smartphones – the Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P along with Android 6.0.
Badar Khushnood Google’s former country representative in Pakistan said, “With Android supporting Urdu, the internet is going to the bottom of the pyramid to the people who read and write and understand only in Urdu.”
Further he said that it was a milestone breakthrough from socio-economic point of view as a wide range of Pakistan’s population is more flexible and easy with their own language, the Urdu.
The new version comes with major improvements and new features compared to Android Lollipop 5.0, its predecessor, the website said. Among other additions, the latest version brings support for Gujarati and Urdu languages.
With rising Internet penetration and free-access-to-Internet projects, the latest operating system will connect more people who will be able to create content in Urdu. This would, as a result, spur growth of local content and the demand for Urdu literature and other content readily available in local languages.
“When it comes to content, language does make a difference,” says A R Rafiq, who runs a software development company and is actively involved with Pakistan Software Houses Association for IT and IT-enabled services.
Urdu content is already available in the country but it is largely in image format making it difficult to search. “The Urdu content is usually not searchable because of its image format,” says Khushnood.
There will be mainly two advantages; users will have a good Urdu font, which was not there before because it was not web friendly. Secondly, the content will become more searchable just like the English content, which can be searched with ease.
He said the next step would be the Speech Recognition Stage. For example, YouTube translates speech into text in many languages but the option is not available in Urdu.