Google is set to add support for Hindi to its Google Assistant before the end of the year.
Hindi is the most widely-spoken language in India, a country with over 1.3 billion inhabitants. It is also one of the fastest-growing large economies on the planet and boasts the third-largest market for smartphone in the world, writes Kishalaya Kundu for Android Headlines.
Hindi support makes sense for Google
All of this adds up to a place of great interest for tech companies such as Google. In even better news for the company, data shows that India is far and away an Android country. Around 97% of smartphones in the country run Google’s Android operating system.
The company’s interest in India is obvious due to its focus on the “next billion users,” and as a result it should come as no surprise that Google Assistant will soon offer support in Hindi. The new Google Assistant was announced at Google I/O last May and is an intelligent personal assistant in the same mold as Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and Amazon’s Alexa.
The new Google Assistant uses artificial intelligence technology and is expected to be significantly more powerful than the existing Google Now personal voice assistant. Google Assistant is integrated in the new Google Allo messaging app, and is expected to be built in to Google Home smart speakers.
Google Assistant makes use of artificial intelligence
The tech giant is expected to release a preview version of Google Assistant in Hindi this year. However there has been no word as to when the full version will be released.
At the same time there are no details as to whether support will be extended to other widely-spoken South Asian languages. This could include Punjabi and Bangla, which each have more than 200 million native speakers in the region and in other parts of the world.
Google continues to focus on India, but not all of the company’s efforts have been a success. The Android One project launched in the country in 2014, but it received a lukewarm reception from both manufacturing partners and buyers.
The company will be hoping for a better response to its latest raft of products and services aimed at the Indian market,
