Tegic Communications Inc. said Groupe Sagem will incorporate Tegic’s European and Chinese
character-based versions of its T9 Text Input software into Sagem mobile phones.
“The demand for new
advanced communications services, such as short messaging services, has been overwhelming. This is one of the most
exciting and rapidly growing areas in the wireless industry,” said Brad Brockhaug, global account manager for
Tegic. “By licensing our technology, Sagem is solving a fundamental problem and enabling people to enter text
on their phones just as they would on a desktop keyboard-using one key press per letter.”
More specifically,
each button on a phone can be interpreted in several different ways. For example, a “3” can be a D, E or F.
The T9 algorithm uses an internal database to automatically scan possible variations to determine the correct word,
explained Brockhaug.
“In essence, T9 embedded software gives the keys on a telephone keypad the
capabilities of a full QWERTY (standard typewriter) keyboard and eliminates the inefficiency of multi-tapping,”
said Brockhaug.
T9 is available in a variety of languages, including Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish,
French, German, Italian, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish. Tegic said it also is developing a
Japanese version of the software, which it expects to introduce in the first quarter.
