Windows Phone 7 Mango Will Support 22 Languages

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.