Apple Losing Touchscreen War 392
An anonymous reader writes "While Apple's iPhone may be the first device most people call to mind when they think of a touch interface mobile, the 3G device is still lagging behind in the touchscreen shifting stakes — it's getting a sound thrashing from Moto and Samsung, who've cornered the Asian market where touchscreens are popular for their ability to let users input Asian languages without all that fiddly Qwerty nonsense."
Re:Um, doesn't the phone have asian language input (Score:2, Informative)
The iPhone does have Chinese input.
Moreover, the article isn't really news at all. The iPhone was just released in most of these markets and isn't officially in China yet anyway. However, being here in Hong Kong (or even in the mainland) you see the iphone everywhere. So just give it time.
Plus, who ever heard of a "touchscreen war"?
Not yet available in LARGE parts of Asia (Score:5, Informative)
TFA says a big reason why it is lagging overall is because Moto and Samsung holds 80% of the touchscreen market in Asia. Considering that Apple has not even RELEASED the iPhone in CHINA, Korea and Vietnam to name a few countries it seems obvious why. Also, it was just released (like a month or two ago?) in places like INDIA, Singapre, etc.
On the contrary, seeing the crazy lengths people will go to here to GET an iPhone (I'm in Vietnam) I'm sure that that percentage will change. It is amazing to see, in a country where the per capita income is about $1K (CIA world factbook), lots of people carrying iPhones (a hacked iPhone is about $700 here). I was just in a cab and surprised to see the driver who probably makes less than $10/day using one (but maybe he "found" it from some unlucky person leaving it in the cab). The demand is so high that many telephone shops will have "iPhone" as the most prominent sign on their shops even though no-one in the entire country is an authorized reseller. Sorry but it is still a big big status symbol here.
Re:Um, doesn't the phone have asian language input (Score:3, Informative)
I was under the impression that it did, and that it even used its predictive-text system with the pictogram-style input ?
Yeah as of iPhone OS 2.0 it has a rather robust input system. Apple wasn't targeting the international market before the 2.0 OS.
The AC that submitted this obviously doesn't know that the iPhone isn't limited to only QWERTY input and the referenced article makes no statement on that is why Samsung and Moto are currently more popular. Looks like a little bit of trolling going on...
http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/keyboard.html [apple.com]
Re:Apple is a niche player? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Apple is a niche player? (Score:3, Informative)
Your problem is you didn't mess with non default. Which as anyone knows, default will not get you the best in 95%+ of cases.
I have an HTC-6800 (mogul for sprint users, titan/ppc-800 for others). The built in I.E. sucks, but if you put opera mini on it, it works wonderfully. Add to that wifi and a bigger ability to customize than the iphone, and i'm quite happy with it. Non quirky gps is also a plus.
Re:Apple is a niche player? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Apple is a niche player? (Score:4, Informative)
As of Tuesday, it has a mic jack and a speaker. Apple has already said there will be Wi-Fi VoIP applications.
If you're always in a Wi-Fi environment and have a 2G touch, you may rarely need a phone anymore.
"Call" back in a year (Score:5, Informative)
Not even remotely comparable figures. iPhones aren't even being sold in places like CHINA, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam, etc. They've only been selling in some other countries for a month or two (Singapore, India).
So if the iPhone has 20% of the OVERALL Asian market, it must be COMPLETELY DOMINATING the few (1?) market it's been in for any length of time: Japan.
Time to buy more Apple Stock.
(East) Asian (i)phones don't use QWERTY (Score:5, Informative)
I only have experience with Japanese, but even on the iPhone you get a Japanese keyboard, not QWERTY.
Most Japanese phones use a standard numeric keypad to enter Japanese text, first in Hiragana and then into Kanji in the same way as computers do. The article poster clearly has no idea what they are talking about.
Re:one day all screens will have touch/stylus inpu (Score:4, Informative)
The kanji is a little faster, but ni-ho-n-go is still 13 strokes.
Re:one day all screens will have touch/stylus inpu (Score:5, Informative)
Get the nifty felt-type like nib from Wacom and put that in your stylus for a more paper-like experience (if you have a glass screen on your tablet).
William
Re:If touchscreens are so all-fired popular ... (Score:1, Informative)
Touch the punctuation key and don't let go, then slide to the punctuation you want and let go.
It will switch back to the alpha.
Re:one day all screens will have touch/stylus inpu (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, there's a nifty add-on for Word which allows one to use proofreading marks as editing gestures which makes corrections very fast and natural in feeling.
William
Re:one day all screens will have touch/stylus inpu (Score:5, Informative)
in Japanese, the word "Japanese" is "Ni-hon-go" 3 'characters' (but I believe there's rules when joining these characters together) vs the English "J-a-p-a-n-e-s-e". I'm not sure how many Japanese characters there are though, since they get joined together to define a word (1 character can be 2 syllables).
There are 1945 jouyou kanji [wikipedia.org], which are required to be known to achieve a normal level of litteracy.
Why we haven't already developed input (we may have, but a Japanese co-worker used an English keyboard and through key tricks typed in her native language that way) that uses the syllables from eastern languages is beyond me. The speed and efficiency would be nice, although we sort of already do type in words "WTF" "LOL" "BRB".
The way it works is that you type each of the sounds that represent the word(ni, ho, n and go in your example), then you convert these sounds to kanji. Sometimes the conversion requires no choice from the user, and sometimes it does(such as ki, which could mean tree, spirit, etc.)
I believe a similar system is used for Chinese.
Remember though that predictive analysis can be used, in the same way that predictive text analysis can be used to enter words on cellphones. For example, when using handwritten input, potential characters can be filtered based on the type of strokes that have been written so far, as there is a certain stroke order for characters. There is also a potential for predictive analysis, as multiple-character words are fixed combinations. For example, if I write hana(flower), perhaps the next character will be ya(shop, thus turning the word into florist) or bi(fire, thus turning the word into fireworks).
But the real question is... which eastern language is the best suited for word input?
Good question. :P
Re:one day all screens will have touch/stylus inpu (Score:3, Informative)
1 whole extra syllable? They have shorter words for our longer words too (no examples off top of my head). "A-na-ta-wa" is "you", BUT the you is normally implied in speaking, and never said, so technically they dropped a syllable from the sentence.
All languages have shorter words for our longer words, and vice versa. Like questioned above, which has the best trade off, especially when writing full words.
Re:one day all screens will have touch/stylus inpu (Score:1, Informative)
Japanese for "no" is iie (pronounced e-a).
iie is three mora (basically the Japanese equivalent to what syllable would be in English).
iPhone allows Asian language entry with finger (Score:3, Informative)
The iPhone already allows you to enter Asian languages with a finger:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/tips/ [apple.com]
Basics -> International Keyboards -> scroll down to the bottom.
Re:one day all screens will have touch/stylus inpu (Score:5, Informative)
Okay, here's how hit works:
Yes, you could type in hiragana/katakana, but I know exactly no one who does. I don't know why. I thought I was being a lazy gaijin by typing in Roman characters, but then I found out that only a few serious secretaries or whatnot actually use the kana keyboard, which is unfortunate, I think, because it about doubles the number of keystrokes required, but whatever. I don't have to learn a new keyboard to type in Japanese.
So let's type "Nihongo" in a Japanese word processor, on a computer:
1) Type "n" -- "n" shows up on the screen /ni/. This is the sound, not the kanji.
/ho/
/n/, and "g" shows up
/go/.
2) Type "i" -- The "n" disappears and is changed to the hiragana character for the sound
3) Type "h" -- "h" shows up.
4) Type "o" -- changes to the character for
5) Type "n" -- "n" shows up
6) Type "g" -- The previous "n" changes to the character for
7) Type "o" -- The "g" disappears and turns into the character for
Now, all of this is underlined. That means it's not really set yet. So we hit space bar.
The characters for the sounds /ni-ho-n-go/ change to the kanji for the word that means Japanese language, as that is the most likely candidate for that string of sounds. If there were some other word with the same reading (I can't think of any) that I used frequently, that would be the computer's first guess.
If we need a different kanji, we hit the space bar again. If it's still not right, we hit it again and a little menu comes up that we can select from.
This is how it has worked for at least 10 years; before that, I don't know.
You actually don't have to convert to kanji after every word. If you just keep typing, it'll start converting behind you, to the most likely kanji. I find this dangerous, however, because you don't pay as much attention and you end up with gibberish sometimes. I tend to do a whole phrase at a time before hitting spacebar.
For cellphones, Japanese is already a lot easier to input than English. --So much so that my gaijin friends and I usually text in Japanese. Because the syllabary is organized by leading consonant and then following vowel (i.e. "ka" "ki" "ku" "ke" "ko"), you just tap that key until you get the sound you want (the "2" key for the /k/ sounds) and it starts predicting right away. Not just words, but entire phrases.
If, for example, I tap "1" twice for /i/, it comes up with the sentence "Ima doko," which means "where are you now?" --A very common thing to text to someone you're meeting.
I don't know how it works for Chinese, but I suspect it is similar. I am very suspicious about the claims of the summary that Asians, presumably with their wacky writing systems, need many keys for their impenetrable Oriental scribblings. But all I really know well is Japanese, and we do fine over here with QWERTY, and even handle the number pad as an input device better than alphabetic languages.
Re:one day all screens will have touch/stylus inpu (Score:1, Informative)
For Chinese, there are multiple input methods in common use: pinyin (Romanization similar to what the Japanese use) for qwerty-loving people like me / mainland Chinese, Bopomofo for Taiwan (similar to kana, but with only 37 letters + 5 tones it actually fits on a qwerty keyboard as individual keys), and Changjie (which is shape-based). There's also a lot more non-standard methods with less use.