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Google Allo learns Hindi

By Milen Yanachkov

Published: Dec 05, 2016, 6:36 AM

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Google's somewhat ill-fated Allo messaging app is getting support for Hindi, one of the most widely spoken languages in the world, with around 310 million speakers as of 2010. Hindi will be available as a language of choice for Google Assistant in Allo, as well as for the app's Smart Reply feature that lets users reply to texts quickly with suggested responses.

"We are enthused by this and today’s launch enables us to extend these features to the next millions of users in a language of their choice,” Amit Fulay, Group Product Manager, Google said in a press statement.

Google has a huge foothold in the mobile market in India, with around 97% of all smartphones in the country running Android as of mid-2016. A little over 41% of the population in India speaks Hindi, making it the most wide-spread language in the country. In stark contrast, only a very small fraction of the Indian population is fluent in English, thus turning the most widely spoken lingua franca in the world into a “language of the elite.”

The Hindi language update will roll out in the coming days. In order to use Hindi as a main language, Allo users will have to use the “Talk to me in Hindi” voice command or change the default language setting of their device to Hindi.

Google has been actively catering to the needs of the region for over two years now, starting with Android One in 2014, and is expected to continue this trend in the years to come as the market foothold of its mobile OS expands even more.