BOLT is First Mobile Browser with Complete Indic Language Support
Bitstream to unveil at India Telecom exhibition its end-to-end solution for mobile operators and device manufacturers for the using, reading and inputting of Indic text into a mobile browser
Marlborough , Massachusetts and New Delhi , India – November 29, 2010 – Bitstream Inc. (NASDAQ:BITS) today announced the first complete mobile browsing solution to fully support Indic languages, specifically nine languages spoken as a first language by an estimated 1.3 billion people living in India and the surrounding regions. This first of its kind solution for handset manufacturers and mobile operators is built upon the award winning BOLT™ cloud computing browsing platform and includes the BOLT mobile browser with Indic language user interfaces, the capability to perfectly render Indic text on a Web page, and the ability for end users to input Indic text into the browser. BOLT is available in JavaME (also known as J2ME) and BREW, and can be used on mobile phones of all types, including those phones without native Indic language support.
In addition to English, the BOLT cloud computing browsing platform now supports the following Indic languages:
Hindi (India’s official language)
Bengali
Gurumukhi
Telugu
Tamil
Kannada
Gujarati
Malayalam
Oriya
“Interacting with Indic languages presents unique challenges on mobile devices,” said Lokesh Joshi, director of research and development at Bitstream India. “Indic characters are not independent from one another the way characters are in Latin alphabets. Each letter’s size and shape is determined by the characters that surround it, making it a very complex language to work with in a mobile context. Bitstream’s heritage is in font technologies, and we have perfected the ability to render Indic fonts on consumer electronics. With BOLT’s Indic solution for device manufacturers and mobile network operators, Bitstream has also perfected Indic rendering in mobile browsing.”
Other mobile browsing solutions address the challenges of Indic text by either imperfectly rendering the text or by displaying a static picture of a Web page. Imperfect rendering makes reading text difficult and affects the aesthetic of a website’s design. Although displaying a picture of the Web page solves the readability issue, it effectively eliminates the ability to manipulate the text and interact with the content. The BOLT Indic solution perfectly renders Indic text on a Web page, and allows users to scale text to larger or smaller sizes, copy and paste text from within a Web page, and interact with the content such as clicking embedded links or filling in Web forms.
BOLT is already the most fully-featured mobile browser built for phones of all types, ranging from entry level handsets to smartphones. BOLT offers users the widest variety of streaming audio and video available in a mobile browser, supporting both Flash and HTML5 video, and also includes many advanced features and social network integration, such as Twitter and Facebook widgets, often surpassing features available on desktop browsers. Introduced last year, the free English language consumer version of BOLT is used by 3 million people in India; 14.5 million people use BOLT worldwide.
“Bitstream has engineered BOLT to maximize the utility of the Internet on mobile for end users, giving handset manufacturers an important competitive differentiator for their mobile phone lines, and providing mobile network operators another way to compete for new users as well as to better manage the data usage on their networks,” said Anna Magliocco-Chagnon, CEO of Bitstream. “Now with the addition of Indic language support, Bitstream is introducing the mobile Internet as it was intended to be seen to millions of new users in India and surrounding regions.”
With its small package, easy to integrate cloud services carrier infrastructure including billing/IN, SMSC, CRM and MIS systems, and best-in-industry compression capabilities, BOLT is ideal for handset manufacturers and mobile network operators to offer the best possible Internet experience for users of the widest range of mobile device categories. For end users in India, BOLT’s data compression – as much as 24:1 – can provide a big savings in mobile data costs, and at the same time help mobile operators better manage data traffic on their networks.
Bitstream will be demonstrating the BOLT cloud computing browsing platform, including its new Indic language support and a preview of the forthcoming Android version, at the upcoming India Telecom (www.indiatelecom.org) exhibition and conference, being held 9 -11 December in New Delhi. To arrange for a meeting and private demonstration, contact the BOLT team at [email protected].
All of BOLT’s English language features are also available in its Indic language version, available at www.boltbrowser.com.
