Nokia users abroad dig the sound of 'Amhrán na bhFiann'

IRELAND’S SOLDIER’S Song seems to have turned into more of an Internationale, thanks to a free karaoke download from Nokia that teaches the words to Amhrán na bhFiann.

Aimed at those Irish natives who can barely stumble past the first few words of their national anthem as Gaeilge, the application has appealed to Gaeilgeoirí as far away as Vietnam and Turkey. To Nokia’s surprise, the application has become an Irish hit for the Finnish mobile giant.

More than 25,000 downloads have been made in just two months of the free application, which was created by Irish mobile application developers MobaNode in consultation with Irish language promoters Gaelchultúr last year.

“Fifty per cent of the downloads were from outside the Irish market, including Vietnam and Turkey,” said Sian Gray, head of marketing for Nokia Ireland. She said Turks in particular seemed enamoured with learning to sing in Irish.

While delighted with the application’s popularity, Nokia is a bit baffled as to why there have been so many foreign downloads, even accounting for the diaspora.

“And Turkey – we don’t really know why Turkey likes it so much,” said Ms Gray. “But it shows that even an application which you think only has a local interest, can have a wider appeal.” The company is pleased with its surprise hit, not least because Nokia commissioned the application itself to provide an example of the kind of local Irish content it hopes developers will produce for the company’s Ovi Store portal site.

Ovi – which means “door” in Finnish – offers music, applications, and a variety of free services and is Nokia’s rival to Apple’s popular iPhone App Store. The success of the Amhrán na bhFiann application has encouraged Nokia to launch a competition for Irish developers, who can submit their own ideas for Irish-oriented applications.

Nokia will select two promising applications and fully cover the cost of their development and promotion.

The Amhrán na bhFiann application was launched just before the all-Ireland GAA finals last year, in hopes that it might help the humming-along masses actually sing the words. Anyone can download it from:

http://short.ie/6d5vd0