HP Labs India

Going beyond the alphabet

San Jose Mercury News
April 07, 2006

Hewlett-Packard has unveiled a computer keyboard pad that should make typing tasks like Web browsing easier for millions of people in India who read and write languages that don't translate well into a Western alphabet.

The same approach could make personal computers more attractive to millions of other people all over the world whose languages use scripts, rather than the Roman alphabet common in Western culture.

HP's ``gesture keyboard'' -- a digitized pen and pad packaged with handwriting-recognition software -- allows people to quickly jot down words in Hindi script on the digitized pad that transmits them to a desktop computer screen. Indians can use it to type a report, chat on instant messengers or search the Web. The new system could prove more convenient than tediously typing combinations of characters from the Indian script-based languages that, if assigned their own computer keys, would require a keyboard with close to 1,000 buttons.

The technology, developed by HP's research unit in Bangalore, India, may offer an answer to the Palo Alto-based computer and printer giant's soul-searching slogan of ``Where's our next billion customers going to come from?''

The imperative facing the huge Silicon Valley-based company is to increase revenue -- rather than boost earnings by simply cutting costs -- and that's on the minds of everyone from the chief executive down to the engineers.

``This really opens up the lid'' to India's PC market, said Ajay Gupta, director of HP Labs India, the research division based in Bangalore.

According to statistics HP cited from a 2004 I-cube study, only 24 percent of India's 223 million urban residents know how to use a computer. While affordability is one factor, language is another.

``We understand even though the price of technology is coming down and incomes are rising, there are lots of non-economic obstacles to the adoption of our technology,'' said Dick Lampman, HP's senior vice president for research and director of HP Labs.

Eighty-three percent of India's urban population can read and write, but only 30 percent read and write English, according to the I-cube study.

India is home to 14 nationally recognized languages and about 500 dialects. So far, the gesture keyboard works only with two languages: India's national language of Hindi, which about 40 percent of the country's population knows how to write, and Kannada, the official language for the state in which Bangalore is located.

But HP says the keyboard may one day be used with other phonetic, script-based languages and benefit more than 1.5 billion non-English speaking people in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and elsewhere.

``If we want the PC market to grow, we need to break that lock between PC literacy and English,'' Gupta said.

HP Labs India was established in 2002 as ``a long bet,'' Gupta said. Its 50 employees and contract research associations focus on research and development that addresses issues in India and can be broadened globally.

The gesture keyboard, which is being manufactured and distributed by another company HP would not name and is available to all PC vendors, was launched three weeks ago. So far, about 100 units have been sold for between $45 and $50, said Shekhar Borgaonkar, department director at HP Labs India.

Borgaonkar demonstrated Thursday how well the gesture keyboard works with applications like Microsoft Word at HP Labs' Palo Alto headquarters. But when he tried it in Google's search engine, he struck out with no results -- twice.

But it wasn't a problem with HP's handwriting-recognition technology, he assured.

``I'm making a spelling mistake in the name of the president of India,'' he said sheepishly.

On the third try, it worked.

By Nicole Wong