Google chairman Eric Schmidt speaks on March 22 in Yangon. The
company has big plans for Myanmar, and they’re closely linked to the
country’s plans for mobile. Myanmar’s President, Thein Sein, has set a
goal of 80% mobile-phone penetration by 2015, from current rates of 9%.
With internet penetration as low as 1%,
and fixed-line telephony penetration in the single figures even in big
cities, mobile networks will be the only way the vast majority of
Myanmar’s 50 million people can get online, and will serve as the main
communications infrastructure for a modern information economy,
including banking, media and civic services.
Sources at Google
told Quartz about the following services that the company plans to
launch over the next few months. (A spokesperson said the company had
“nothing to announce at this time regarding product launches or future
launches in Myanmar.”)
Google.com.mm. Google will
launch a search engine portal with native Burmese-language support in
the next few weeks. Some sharp-eyed users caught a glimpse of an early
test version that went up a few weeks ago and posted it on Instagram
(above).
Burmese-language support integration.
Language support is at the core of pretty much everything Google does.
Services such as the Android mobile operating system, Google Translate,
Google Search and Google Drive are unusable in Burmese without it. The
only way to get a Burmese-language Android phone is to jailbreak it,
so it can work with a host of locally-built apps. Although HTC launched
Burmese-language Android phones earlier this year, Google will put up
its own language translation and font system based on Unicode, the
international standard. Debates over Unicode have waged for years in
Myanmar, where it is not popular, but Google has settled on it. Support for Search and Android will come first; other services will happen later.
Google Play… and Google Wallet? The
Google Play store, the app store for Android phones, has been blocked
in Myanmar because of international sanctions that restrict payments to
the country. Instead, locals use pirate app stores, which work with
their jailbroken phones. Google plans to open the Google Play store in
the near future, and already the country’s app developers report restrictions are coming down.
It
could also conceivably integrate its electronic payments platform,
Google wallet—along with Google Play—to create a networked banking
system that could work around Myanmar banks, many of which are still blacklisted.
Lastly, handset makers such as HTC (whose CEO is Burmese) are
negotiating with the telecom companies about offering deals for the
first phones available on the new networks.
Business services. Google
Analytics, which gives website owners data on their traffic, is also
blocked inside Myanmar. Google is looking to launch the service soon.
With the various tools on Google, from document tools to website
management, the company sees itself as a new services provider for the
country, where people use much of the blockaded software via proxy
servers that disguise where they are getting online from, or else use
pirated versions.
source: Quartz
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