Windows Phone 7 only supported five languages last year when it was launched in its final version: English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Windows Phone 7 Mango to arrive this fall will support a total number of 22 languages making the product more accessible on foreign markets.

According to Microsoft's John McConnell, together with Mango will come support for Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese (simplified and traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Portuguese, Russian, and Swedish. These languages will also be supported by their respective Zune software.

While the platform itself will support all the above, not all Windows Phones will have all languages installed. Because they eat up a lot of storage space, OEMs and carriers will have a final say as per which and how many languages will be included. Some languages required Microsoft to come up with completely new fonts in order to support both text display and input. There are four new fonts for Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

As far as text input goes, the Windows Phone keyboard will support Brazilian Portuguese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Swedish, Traditional Chinese, Turkish, and Ukrainian input. Out of these, only Hungarian, Indonesian, Turkish and Ukrainian will not have text prediction.

In order to support a now going international product Microsoft also expands the Marketplace, Xbox Live and Bing availability. Some will support up to 35 countries while other somewhat less. Head over to the source link if you're interested in Microsoft's future support for your own language and region.

(Reuters) - Tokyo stocks climbed to a two-week high on Friday, led by banks that leapt after Morgan Stanley's (MS.N) strong results and euro-sensitive issues such as Canon (7751.T), up on the euro's gains after officials agreed on steps to solve Greece's debt woes.

While buying by foreigners has somewhat eased, individual investors as well as domestic institutional players dominated the market, with the Nikkei's gains capped slightly above 10,100 as traders cited concerns about the yen's renewed strength against the dollar.

"Watch volumes on banks. This is still mostly long-term investors who previously owned the stock re-establishing positions, but we're also seeing some new buyers piling into these shares," said Takashi Ohba, a senior strategist at Okasan Securities.

The Nikkei rose 1.3 percent to 10,136.77 by midafternoon and was on track for its biggest daily gain in more than three weeks. The broader Topix .TOPX rose 1.1 percent to 869.637.

The benchmark on Friday jumped above near-term resistance at 10.005, marked by a tenkan line on its daily Ichimoku cloud.

"More firms posted earnings above expectations yesterday, defying worries over supply chains. That's why firms posting results next week are charging higher today," said a trader at a foreign brokerage who did not want to be quoted by name.

Canon Marketing (8060.T) jumped 7.2 percent after hiking its profit forecast, while Tamron Co (7740.T) soared 7.3 percent to 1,976 yen, at one point hitting a three week high at 2,032 yen after the company lifted its net profit outlook and Nomura Securities upgraded the stock to "buy.

"After these hikes and stronger-than-expected results from Wall Street, everyone is looking at firms reporting next week such as Toshiba and Komatsu -- on fire today on hopes for forecast hikes," the trader said.

Construction machinery maker Komatsu Ltd (6301.T) added 2 percent to 2,553 yen, while electrical machinery maker Toshiba Corp (6502.T), boosted earlier this week by Apple Corp's (AAPL.O) strong earnings, gained 2.4 percent to 421 yen.

Most investors are long in the market, suggesting sentiment toward Japanese stocks is overwhelmingly positive.

"The Japanese equities long-short ratio reached an annual high of 12.28 on July 14. This denotes that there are over 12 times more longs than shorts in the market as institutional ownership in the region is close to annual highs," research firm Data Explorers said in a note to clients.

BANKS ADVANCE

Banks .IBNKS.T continued their relief rally into a fourth straight day, rising to a two-week high. They were led by Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (8306.T), Japan's largest bank by assets, charging up 3.6 percent to 409 yen in very active trade, within shouting distance of its post-quake high of 419 yen reached on July 8.

An emergency summit of leaders of the 17-nation euro zone pledged on Thursday to conduct a second bailout of Greece with an extra 109 billion euros ($157 billion) of government money, plus a contribution by private sector bondholders estimated to total as much as 50 billion euros by mid-2014.

Goldman Sachs said on Thursday that Japanese lenders were likely to report earnings consensus for the first quarter of this fiscal year in line or above the market's consensus, adding to banks' rally. The brokerage also said Mitsubishi UFJ is its top pick.

"People are turning a bit more bullish, because you need financials to really push the whole market higher. Forget about any decent rally when that sector lags others," said Okasan's Ohba, adding that banks' advance may help the Nikkei pop above its post-quake high of 10,207.91 heading into the earnings season next week.

Banking shares were one of the worst-hit sectors after the March 11 disaster because of speculation that they may have to forgive some of their loans to Tokyo Electric Power Co (9501.T), which is still struggling with a radiation crisis at its Fukushima nuclear plant that was triggered by the disaster.

MUFG's shares are still down 7.2 percent from where they were before the earthquake. The bank shares subindex .IBNKS.T has fallen 10.1 percent since then, compared with a 3.2 percent fall in the Nikkei.

Morgan Stanley (MS.N) wowed Wall Street on Thursday with results that far surpassed expectations, just days after rival Goldman Sachs (GS.N) disappointed investors.

Canon, which obtains about one third of its sales in Europe, rose 1.6 percent to 3,795 yen and Nikon, another euro-sensitive stock, gained 1.5 percent to 1,859 yen after the euro rose to a two-week high against the Japanese currency on Thursday.

Volumes picked up with 1.3 billion shares changing hands on the main board by late afternoon, suggesting Friday's volumes may come in above this week's daily volumes around 1.5 billion shares and suggesting there is more upside potential to the market.

(Additional reporting by Ayai Tomisawa; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

(Reuters) - The euro rallied to a two-week high against the dollar in Asia on Friday after euro-zone officials gave their financial rescue fund sweeping new powers to solve Greece's debt troubles, easing fears that the country's debt crisis would spread.

The dollar was punished across the board as the encouraging news out of Europe contrasted with confusion over how much progress Washington is making to avoid a U.S. default.

"Europe has made a big stride after all while the U.S. is still dragging its feet on the debt ceiling. That's why the dollar is under pressure now," said a dealer at a Japanese bank in Tokyo.

Markets cheered the package as it was more ambitious than some had expected earlier this week. The euro climbed to a two-week high of $1.4440 before steadying around$1.4390.

The euro is around the level of the 50 percent retracement of its decline from early May until last week, in which worry about the euro zone debt crisis played a big role.

European leaders have agreed on a bailout package that would make it easier for Greece to reduce debt more sustainably by easing terms of loans and by making Greek bond investors shoulder some of the burden.

As these measures are likely to prompt credit rating firms to declare Greece to be in temporary default, the leaders also made provisions to protect Greek banks from the fallout, by providing credit guarantees if needed to ensure they can still obtain liquidity from the European Central Bank.

The region's rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, will be allowed to buy bonds in the secondary market if necessary and also to lend governments money to recapitalize banks.

"The package has made it difficult to make speculative attacks on the euro. But they were vague on increasing the size of the bailout fund. That's one weak point," said another trader at a Japanese bank.

Euro bears say it is yet to be seen if the measures can stabilize other indebted countries and stave off contagion to the currency bloc's bigger economies.

Still, it was enough to prompt short-covering in the euro.

"It's probably not a long-term solution but it provides some clarity ... At the end of the day it doesn't address key issues, but it will contain contagion," said Grant Turley, a strategist at ANZ in Sydney.

The common currency could target around $1.4455, where charts show an Elliot wave equality target as well as the top of the Ichimoku cloud, and then $1.4520, a 61.8 percent retracement of its decline since May.

Implied volatilities on euro/dollar options dropped as fears receded that disappointment over the summit could pummel the euro. One-month volatility fell to below 12 percent from above 13 percent before the summit.

The single currency also rose to around 1.1765 Swiss francs, 3.5 percent above the record low of 1.1365 francs hit at the start of the week.

DOLLAR INDEX BELOW TRENDLINE

As the euro recovered, the dollar index .DXY wallowed near a six-week low after posting its biggest daily drop of the year on Thursday.

The index stood at 74.096, near Thursday's low of 73.889, having clearly broken below its trendline support since May.

The U.S. currency also slipped to a four-month trough of 78.22 yen, the lowest since joint G7 intervention in mid-March, before recovering to 78.58 yen.

Still, few traders think Japan is ready to intervene in the near future, in part because the yen is still off recent peaks against most currencies except the dollar.

Japanese margin traders have a huge long position in the dollar, which means any intervention would likely only invite their profit-taking and have a limited impact.

Pricing of dollar/yen options also suggested limited expectations of Japan's intervention with scant demand for yen puts, whose value would gain sharply in the event of yen selling intervention.

Their risk reversal spreads, which measure the price gap between yen calls and yen puts, rose to the highest level in four months in favor of yen calls, pointing to limited demand for yen puts.

That contrasts with the days following Japan's intervention last September, when many market players bought yen puts for hedging.

While an enlivened risk appetite after the euro-zone debt deal and the entrenched perception that U.S. monetary policy will remain loose for the foreseeable future are the main damper on the currency, some traders say the dollar was not helped by uncertainty over wrangling in Washington on the debt ceiling.

Efforts to craft a $3 trillion deficit-reduction deal gained traction on Thursday, but the White House and Republicans have not broken their impasse over higher taxes. Tax hikes are opposed by the Republicans, who control the lower house.

Although most market players expect some sort of deal by the August 2 deadline to raise the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling and avoid default, some worry that failure to reach a major deficit reduction plan could lead to a credit downgrading.

As the U.S. dollar wilted, the New Zealand dollar stayed near a 30-year high of $0.8643 hit on Thursday while the Canadian dollar also remained near a 3 1/2-year high of C$0.9424.