SwiftKey ties up with Karbonn, Lava, Celkon, Obi Mobiles, Zen and others to take on Swype

NEW DELHI: London-headquartered SwiftKey , a maker of keyboard applications for phones and tablets, has tied up with nine smartphone vendors in India to take on competition from popular apps like Google Hindi and Swype.

Smartphones from Karbonn, Lava, Celkon, Obi Mobiles, Zen and Intex will now come preloaded with the SwiftKey app, Eric D Collins, chief revenue and distribution officer for SwiftKey, told ET. Micromax and Spice are among the other vendors that are working with SwiftKey.

"These are the exclusive tie-ups under which some of their devices will come preloaded with SwiftKet keyboard application. We are committed to innovating and improving our product for the Indian market and tailoring it for each individual user," Collins said. According to him, SwiftKey has over 300 million users globally , with India being its second-biggest market after the US. He declined to share details on the current user base in India.

India has close to 100 million non-English speaking mobile phone users. The SwiftKey app accommodates 22 vernacular languages, including Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu and Malayalam. The vernacular language pack feature in the application was developed in collaboration with JNU.