Indian engineers help iPhones dial hinterland

Last month, Apple announced that starting April, its iPhones will support 10 Indian languages. Thanks to the expertise of its Indian teams working with global ones, support for local languages will not just help Apple catch up with what Google's Android has offered in India for years-it will also help it capture more firsttime phone buyers from nonmetropolitan markets across the country, experts said.

- Shouvik Das

From next month, iPhones eligible to receive Apple's iOS 18.4 update will support Bangla, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. These languages would be applicable across every nook and cranny of the iPhone's software interface, just the way it already supports languages such as French, Latin or Mandarin Chinese.

A senior company executive told Mint that the introduction of the new languages involved "crucial contributions from Apple's India teams, which work cross-functionally across various aspects of the com-