Predictive Hinglish texting and ring tones as loud as an electric saw are among the weapons being used by Motorola to win young customers in India, the world’s fastest-growing mobile phone market.

The American handset maker, the world’s second-biggest, has launched a low-cost phone aimed at 19 to 24-year-olds as it tries to steal market share from Nokia.

The Moto Yuva 180 claims to be the first handset with a Hindi dictionary allowing users to use predictive text in Hinglish – a street slang combination of Hindi and English. While handsets with dual Hindi-English mode key-pads are available, it is the first with an embedded dictionary. It contains 30,000 Hindi words that prompt the user with Hinglish terms.

For example, when the first couple of letters of a word such as yaar (pal) and changa (great) are entered, the phone will bring up the suggested word, making text messaging faster.

Lloyd Mathias, marketing director of Motorola India, said: “It’s the language of youth. It’s cool now even for those with access to quality English education. The Indian market is growing at a furious rate and we want to get to the youngsters growing up. One of their first demands is a phone.”

Priced at less than 2,000 rupees (£24.50), it is aimed at first-time buyers – primarily school-leavers in the cities. Other gimmicks include ring tones with a peak level of 107 decibels, loud enough to overcome the deafening background noise on Indian city streets, memory to hold more than 750 texts and up to ten hours’ talk time.

The Moto Yuva W180 also features a Hindu calendar that includes data about festivals, sunrise and sunset times and yoga.

The phone, developed in Motorola’s research facility in Bangalore, is the opening salvo in a competitive battle in India among mobile phone makers, whose home markets are saturated.

Motorola is also keen to make new products available before the expected arrival in Asia early next year of Apple’s iPhone.

Unlike in the United States and Europe, mobile phone purchases in India are not decided by bundled network offers, but by the handset itself. Most consumers choose a phone and then buy a prepaid card from a network.

Indian network providers are gaining about six million subscribers a month. Growth is driven by rates as low as one rupee a minute, cheap handsets costing as little as $30 (£14.50) and a growing material aspiration in the cities.

In rural areas, mobile phone firms see a huge opportunity to win customers because many villages have no land lines. Rural India accounts for just a fifth of the total subscriber base.

India had 209 million subscribers at the end of September, according to the latest figures, meaning that 19 in every 100 people own a mobile phone. Analysts predict that there will be 500 million subscribers by 2010.

Queen’s Hinglish?

Hinglish texting phrases

Aaj raat full night party! (Let’s party all night!)
Shaam ko movie. Come jaldi. (Movie tonight. Come quickly.)
Faltu mein tension kyon leta hai! (Take it easy!)
Hasi to phasi(She’s crazy for me!)

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