Hello, I'm Hiroki, the CEO of StudyX G.K. Recently, we've been putting a lot of energy into multilingual support. Today I'd like to share some examples of that work and where we're headed.
Building Mobile Apps for the Entire World
Mobile apps are products that can reach the world directly, thanks to the widespread adoption of iOS and Android devices.
We make small software for learners in Morioka (a small city in Japan), but even from a tiny local place like this, the internet and the advancement of computing technology make it possible to go global instantly.
Mobile is cosmic. This is our vision, and being international is a subset of being cosmic, so localization is an essential part of realizing that vision. The work of understanding regional cultures and adapting our products to them is no small feat, but thanks to advances in AI, it's now possible to go far beyond simple word-for-word translation.
Supporting 20–30 Languages Will Become the Norm
For example, the apps I've released support not only Japanese (our native language) and English (the de facto international standard), but also Chinese, French, Arabic, Indonesian, German, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Thai, Vietnamese, Hindi, and more.
As a result, Kinder Browser is widely used in the United States and Europe, Kinder Paint is popular in China, and StudyX MathCal is heavily used in Thailand and Korea. It's fascinating as a product developer to see how different user bases emerge across different regions for different products — and to sense the diversity of humanity through their tastes and habits.
We'll continue expanding our language support to cover languages we haven't yet reached. Ultimately, we aim to support every language offered by the devices and app stores our users rely on. Supporting 20 to 30 languages will likely become the standard expectation for app development.
Small Is Strength
For StudyX, a small, local software company, the progress of AI is unquestionably a tailwind. The more AI advances, the more we can focus on making great things. We can now bring ambitious ideas to life that once seemed out of reach. Being small means being agile, and it means having a lean cost structure by nature. By amplifying human sensibility and craftsmanship with technology, local becomes global. We can stay small and still make a global impact.
This change is only just beginning. On a personal note, I'm excited by the prospect of moving away from a mechanical life chained to a PC writing code all day, toward something more like the classical ideal of seikō uku (晴耕雨読): farming on sunny days, reading on rainy ones. Just as massive mainframes evolved into compact smartphones and made civilization more cosmic, I believe that being small is being cosmic — and that's exactly what makes mobile so powerful.