(4 July 2007 6:25 pm)

MUMBAI: Nokia announced the launch of 'Vernacular news portal' with Malayalam Manorama, the south based publication group.

With this offering, all Nokia GPRS enabled handset users in Kerala will be able to get national and international news in their native language across categories of news - sports, travel, music, astrology and movies amongst others.

Speaking at the launch of this service, Nokia India director marketing Devinder Kishore said, "Ease-of-use is a key Nokia proposition. Currently the internet penetration is still very low, especially in smaller cities and rural areas. Services such as the mobile newspaper will ride on the larger penetration of mobile phones and bring the internet revolution to the masses. With the launch of this service, we are transcending the language barriers and extending the benefits of the Data services over mobiles to the people who are not conversant with English."

The service will be offered in 10 languages which include Hindi, Punjabi, Bengali, Oriya, Assamese, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu and Kannada. This application also supports 'Search' and 'Mobile Advertising', while making the 'internet' and the 'Search' facility available to the non-English literates.

Manorama Online COO Mariam Mathew said, "We are committed to provide our readers newer and innovative way to consume news and this will help us to further our bond with our consumers. True to the Manorama tradition, we will strive to reach out to all Malayalis, wherever they are - inside or outside India, on a desktop or on the move."

Users can download the Nokia Malayalam Manorma news portal icon by typing MM and sending an SMS to 5555. The user will then receive a URL on their handset and can download the icon by clicking on the URL and view the latest news updates instantly which will be refreshed every 30 minutes. The application can be activated on all Nokia GPRS handsets.