App offers keyboards for most unique alphabets

Global Business

There seems to be an app for everything these days. And with around two million apps now in the Google Play store alone, it’s hard for app developers to stand out from the crowd.

But one Chinese app maker has managed to do exactly that by producing a keyboard app that’s helping to preserve languages around the world.

CCTV America’s Mark Niu reports.

A team from app developer Kika Tech arrives in Silicon Valley from Beijing to set up a new office.

Their keyboard app has been a huge success, adding 500,000 users each day and hitting number one on the Google PlayStore for free productivity apps.

Kika’s keyboard app offers 1600 emojis, millions of animated images, and more than 60 languages.

Enter the language of Bashkir, also known as Bashkort spoken by 1-and-a-half million people, mostly in the Russian Republic of Bashkortostan. There is no mobile keyboard with their letters.

After several weeks of Kika app’s work, the Bashkir keyboard was born and complete with swipe features and predictive text.

Kika doesn’t plan to stop at Bashkir either. Teams are already working on keyboards to help save Tartar, spoken in the Russian republic of Tatarstan and Romansh which a language spoken in southeastern Switzerland.