New Delhi: Targeting the 43 per cent of the Indian population that understands Hindi, Nokia on Tuesday (Nov 2, 2004) showcased three handsets with predictive text input to enable users to send and receive messages (SMS) in Hindi, besides announcing a Hindi mobile portal.

"Hindi is the mother tongue of 43 per cent of India's population. Nokia's initiative on localisation, Saral Mobile Sandesh or SMS with predictive text input in Hindi on three of its latest phones, Nokia 1100, 1108 and 2300, brings the benefit of mobile revolution to a larger consumer base," Sanjay Behl, head (marketing), Nokia Mobiles, said.

"Hindi will be the new language of mobile. Hindi population is large and an under-served segment which could be served through the mobile platform," Behl said.

The penetration percentage of mobile in the Hindi heartland is less than the national average penetration percentage of 4 per cent, he said. "This throws up a lot of business to be tapped."

He said the company was working on adding four more languages, Bengali, Kannada, Tamil and Marathi to the SMS localisation initiative.

Currently, 24 models of Nokia phones support Hindi User Interface, 21 models support text input.

The Hindi portal 'Mera Nokia' will provide content services like astrology, news, jokes and other services, he said.

The company is partnering with leading service providers to make the content available through SMS and GPRS. For news, it has tied up with Zee News and NDTV.

Behl said Nokia has tied up with all leading service providers like Airtel, Hutch, Idea who will provide Hindi brochures while selling recharge coupons to help users to get used to Hindi SMS.