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Ethiopia - FAQs answered about Nokia Ethiopic Phone

As the person within Nokia responsible for Ethiopia, I have been monitoring your user's comments closely and wanted to let you know that we appreciate their feedback. Based on what I have read, I would like to provide some clarification on some of their comments:

1) Why are the 'Ethiopic' mobile devices only in Amharic?


As Ethiopia entered the new Millennium, Nokia introduced five 'Ethiopic' mobile devices which are the 1200, 1208, 1650, 2630 & 2760 with more to come in the future.The 'user interface' and the 'user manual' on the current 'Ethiopic' mobile devices are in Amharic and English. Amharic was obviously selected as it is the national language. Users will however be able to save contacts, send/ receive text messages in any Ethiopian language that uses the 'Ethiopic' or 'Latin' characters. Lastly, depending on demand and feedback from our customers, we will also evaluate whether to add the 'Ethiopic' characters to additional mobile devices within our portfolio and whether to add additional Ethiopian languages to these mobile devices.

2) Why does the 'Ethiopic' mobile device use 'meret' vs. 'mereche' or 'yemritu'?

There were several factors that led to this during the translation process (one being limited space) and it is something we're trying to improve on subsequent 'Ethiopic' mobile devices.

3) Do these 'Ethiopic' mobile devices work outside of Ethiopia?

These current 'Ethiopic' mobile devices are GSM and are made for the Ethiopian market which uses the 900/1800Mhz frequency band. For example, if an Ethiopian were to roam in other countries that use 900/1800Mhz (which is most of the world except the US and a few other countries), the user would be able to use these mobile devices. For text messaging to work, the operator would need to support the UCS-2 feature in their messaging center which basically would recognize characters other than Latin characters. This is something we continue to test, however, based on our experience, it appears that many operators around the world support this feature for transmission of Chinese, Indian, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic characters, among others.

4) How does 'texting' work?

Nokia has worked closely with the Ethiopian Telecommunications Corporation (ETC) which has ensured that the messaging center supports the UCS-2 feature. Therefore Ethiopians with these mobile devices can send each other text messages in any Ethiopian language using 'Ethiopic' characters. One can also continue to use 'Latin' letters with these mobile devices.

5) Why is Nokia launching these 'Ethiopic' mobile devices now?

Based on our research, 'localization' is extremely important to users and therefore Nokia embarked on a multi-year project to develop these 'Ethiopic' mobile devices. This initiative required that we develop a solution whereby all the 'Ethiopic' characters and numerals are accessible on a keypad of a standard mobile device. That was the challenge which has been overcome. All the various forms of the 'Ethiopic' characters are accessible on the mobile device. In terms of the timing, we were very happy to launch this during the Ethiopian Millennium which is also the same time that ETC re-launched the text messaging service and started expanding the mobile network.

6) What are the other benefits for consumers in Ethiopia?

The main benefit to consumers is that they'll be able to utilize all the features of their mobile devices which is not always the case, especially for those Ethiopians who are not fluent in the English language. Consumers would also be able to communicate via text message using their own language. Lastly, Nokia provides a '13 month' warranty in Ethiopia (based on the Ethiopian calendar: 365 days) for consumers who purchase these mobile devices from our official distributor and its retailers in Ethiopia.

Thanks.
Levi Girma