Well, I think it all depends on how actively hindi gets percolated to the masses in the smaller cities of India with regard to "computer usage". It has to happen eventually, as India is rising economically and would perhaps want to preserve its identity just to stand out in some sense. Infact, any country at that level would want to do that. USA did it by changing the very words of English..
. China is already doing it. Germany does that. Let's see.
Good part is that Indian government is realising that interoperability of its operations in different states must be done in local languages. This issue was taken up when Billy visited India this time. They say, Microsoft is making a special Indian version of the Operating System catering to India specific needs. Noises perhaps in the right direction..!
The only grey area I see is the proper definition and categorisation of domain extensions. Like, ".com" should have an equivalent in hindi for people to type using hindi keyboard. Would it be ".&
#2325;&
#2377;&
#2350;" or would it be hindi letters on the keys that correspond to ".com" in English. Aside, what happens to the "www" of the address. Translating that in hindi perhaps becomes even more cumbersome. Unless, these things get sorted out fast, hindi IDNs will remain dormant. How do chinese, Koreans type "www"?
Bottomline is, if the IDNs can become successfull elsewhere, I see no reason why they can't in India!
And who says India masses will not have the buying power! Check these out.
http://in.rediff.com/money/2005/dec/23inter.htm
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1342884,curpg-1.cms
Cheers!
a2zofb2b said:
My take on the indian market is
Hinglish.com (Hindi word in English)
English.com
English.in
English.co.in
Hinglish.in
IDN Names with their own extension
IDN.com
IDN.in
With IDN names, unless it is developed you may not get any typein traffic.
It will be very rare that people will type खोज.com, they will either enters खोज.कॉम or just खोज.
