Siri, iOS’s newest personal assistant feature available on the iPhone 4S, currently has support for English (United States, United Kingdom and Australia dialects), German, and French.
Apple has already promised new languages on their Siri support page, but today, a new report from DoNews (via Tech in Asia) says that Siri will be gaining support for Chinese, Japanese, and Russian next month.
From this source it claims that Siri will launch in Chinese next month, and is already undergoing internal testing this month.
In addition to understanding and speaking Chinese, Siri will soon also be able to give local information and navigation – something that’s currently limited only to the US. At present, the Siri assistant speaks English, French, and German. So if you’re Chinese, you’ll have to ask it stuff in English for the time being.
The Chinese aspect of Siri will be closely related to the US version, the report says. Siri will be able to give directions and local information throughout China, a feature that is enjoyed by many in the US.
Deploying Siri throughout China would be a huge feat for Apple, considering the amount of traction the iPhone is seeing in that country. The iPhone 4S launched on China Unicom last month, and is close to launching on China Telecom very soon. China has a very big market of people wanting to use the iPhone.
The report says that Siri Chinese will only have support for the standard Mandarin Chinese, leaving out the Cantonese dialect that is spoken by many people throughout China.
As for Japan and Russia, they’re both other key markets Apple will want to take advantage of. Besides the rumored Chinese and Japanese, Apple has also promised to roll out Korean, Italian, and Spanish versions of Siri sometimes this year.
Is your country still missing support for Siri?