SwiftKey beta sees 100k downloads, most of any app on Android Market last week

TouchType has announced its SwiftKey keyboard hit the 100,000-download milestone in it's first week of availability on the Android Market, making it the most downloaded app of the past week.  For those of us using it, it comes as no surprise.  I've been a fan of SwiftKey for a while now, ever since the developers (great group of people BTW) shot us a preview for our Keyboard Roundup, and don't know how I'd get by without it!  We also talked about SwiftKey a little last week when we announced that it was coming to the Market, and from the comments it sounds like many of you guys were trying it out, give a yell in the comments and let us know how it's working for you.  We've got the full press release after the jump, where you can get the details and see what the buzz around the web has to say about SwiftKey.

*WED 21ST JULY 2010 - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE*

*Innovative text prediction app **exceeds 100,000 downloads in first

week*

*LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM* —* *An innovative text prediction app that

takes the strain out of touchscreen typing has exceeded 100,000

downloads in its first week on Google’s Android™ Market, its

developers said Wednesday.

SwiftKey™, created by British start-up company TouchType, was the

most downloaded Android™ app last week according to the popular blog

‘Android and Me’. It was also chosen as a top Android pick by

several other major tech sites, including Gizmodo, Tech Radar and

Brothersoft Mobile.

“The last week has been phenomenal,” said Jon Reynolds,

TouchType’s co-founder and CEO. “We started TouchType because we

knew there must be a better way to type on a touchscreen phone. As

well as exceeding all download expectations, we have been overwhelmed

by the positive feedback about SwiftKey™. It has already established

itself as a market-leading text entry solution.”

Tech blog Engadget heralded SwiftKey™’s launch as the introduction

of “world class predictive text” for Android phones, saying the

app has “an uncanny ability to guess what your next word will be…

In our early tests, we're pretty darn impressed.”

TechRadar named SwiftKey™ as the best keyboard app on Android™.

Placing SwiftKey™ at the top of its Android™ apps of the week,

Gizmodo said: “The star feature of SwiftKey™ is its predictive

text – it literally learns the way you type.”

What makes SwiftKey™ revolutionary is TouchType’s patent-pending

language technology, which understands how words are combined within

sentences and continually learns as a user writes.

“We’ve analysed over 50 billion words in nine major languages to

build the models that drive our prediction engine,” said Ben

Medlock, TouchType’s Chief Technical Officer. “SwiftKey™ is the

first text entry app on the market to harness the incredible power of

statistical language processing. It takes predictive text to a whole

new level, resulting in an unparalleled user experience.”

TouchType says the user feedback it has received so far has been

incredibly positive. “I think this is the best way to text ever

invented,” one user said. “SwiftKey Beta is probably the best

thing that happened to Android in recent times,” commented another.

The beta is currently available to all smartphones running the Google

Android™ platform. TouchType says it is working hard to make a

series of enhancements in response to beta feedback before a full paid

launch later in the year. The first update to the beta was released

Wednesday.

Jerry Hildenbrand
Senior Editor — Google Ecosystem

Jerry is an amateur woodworker and struggling shade tree mechanic. There's nothing he can't take apart, but many things he can't reassemble. You'll find him writing and speaking his loud opinion on Android Central and occasionally on Twitter.