In yet another feather in the cap to the Central government’s Make in India as well as the Digital India campaigns, the world’s first regional operating system (OS) Indus is now the second most popular, surpassing global tech giants like Apple and Microsoft.
According to the data by Conterpount Research from Economic Times, Indus OS had a 5.6% share in the total smartphone market during January-March, ahead of Apple’s iOS which was at no. 5 with 2.5% share and Microsoft’s Windows which had a share of 0.3% — same as Samsung’s Tizen OS – at no. 7 and Android retaining the top spot.
Indus OS is now available on 25 models of Micromax and is present on 1.4 million of these phones. Formerly known as Firstouch, it was founded by IIT-Bombay graduates, Rakesh Deshmukh , Akash Dongre and Sudhir B.
It had signed a first-of-its-kind MoU with the Government of India’s Department of Electronics and IT (DeitY) to develop a native operating system with integrated text-to-speech technology in regional languages reports The Times of India.
Here are its core features:
- It includes a ‘swipe to translate’ feature that can translate and transliterate text messages from English into a regional language with a flick of the hand.
- It has also developed and patented regional language keyboards which are customized for 12 regional languages along with predictions to make typing effortless and accurate.
- It also has a mobile application App Bazaar store targeting the regional-language audience.
- It is the world’s first smartphone platform to provide transliteration functionality in Urdu, which is read from right to left.