Japan is a big buyer of technology, and Apple want to make sure their market in the land of the Rising Sun continues to rise. Siri, while immensely popular among speakers of languages it supports, has been unusable with Japanese speakers due to a lack of support for the language in the voice assistant. Apple have decided to localise support for Japanese on Siri.
Engadget's report on matters shows that Tim Cook has confirmed development of Japanese support, with the first rollouts for it coming to Japan "over the next few weeks". The support will be added with the next update to Apple's mobile operating system, iOS.
The 5.1 release will include a variety of other additional functions and features, which seem to all correspond with a leaked list of changes and additions that were previously reported on. It is still too early to say for certain if the information which was 'leaked' actually is entirely legitimate, but from the one claim, it seems to have at least some validity. The leak also reports that the slide to access camera option will be coming to iOS 5.1, in a similar fashion to the option on the Ice Cream Sandwich lock screen for Android smartphones.
Siri's updates for the Japanese market will add some appeal to potential buyers who may have sat on the fence with the release of the iPhone 4S. Now, with support, they may feel that they can update from iPhones they already own, or they may jump ships. It will be undoubtedly impressive if Apple manage to make Japanese flow with Siri, since even Google Translate can struggle with it at times.
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