With the new telecom providers penetrating the local market, mobile phone devices companies are actively growing and promoting their gadgets for individual needs, testing how the consumers’ perspective would rev up demand.
Members at the fifth edition of Mobile Monday Yangon were curious about how mobile devices would be localised to fit the taste buds of the customers in Myanmar market. More than 80 entrepreneurs from start-up industry and expats joined the event as experts talked about localisation of global products for Myanmar.
Mobile Monday, which started in Helsinki, is an informal monthly event which enables mobile industry visionaries, developers, and influential individuals to share ideas and collaborate, and started in Yangon in April.
CEO of Ooredoo Myanmar, Ross Cormack, said, “Majority of the mobile phone users in Myanmar to communicate in local language that supports every platform for office uses, social media uses such as Facebook with their mobile devices.
“To fulfil every angle of the local taste would be really strategic for both telecom and mobile device firms. From using data services with the proper specs to inputting right functions such as keyboard and fonts usages, the devices should really go local to attract customers.”
Market size of mobile devices, social media and web contents in Myanmar shows that most users are used to the Zawgyi font, however, the standard is still questioned among mobile phone companies with Zawgyi even if it is widely used across the country. There have been suggestions that the Unicode standard font be promoted and applied in Myanmar IT industry.
“We are doing our best to meet the needs of our potential users. In Myanmar, everyone has different options for budgets, need for connectivity volume, usage and functionality. Adapting to local language is our key challenge in terms of localising,” U Zarni Win Htet, head of channel management of Samsung Myanmar.
“We have already planned to include both Unicode and Zawgyi system in our devices but we have to admit that we find it challenging to apply both,” he said.
