Patent ID: 8712756

Claim:
A character input device, comprising: a character input section including a plurality of character keys; a display section that displays an input character(s); and a next word prediction section that predicts a respective word being subsequently input in an event of input-word reception in the character input section and that displays the word as a next word candidate on the display section, the next word prediction section predicting the respective word before any part of the respective word is input in the character input section, wherein the next word prediction section stores usage history information indicative of whether the next word candidate for the respective input-received word was used by a user, and determines in accordance with the usage history information of words as of a time point of the event of input-word reception of the word whether to display the next word candidate on the display section, the usage history information includes a number of used times of the next word candidate and a number of unused times of the next word candidate for the respective input-received word, the next word prediction section determines whether to display the next word candidate on the display section in accordance with the result of a comparison between the number of used times of the next word candidate and the number of unused times of the next word candidate and when a value obtained by adding a constant to the number of used times of the next word candidate is smaller than a value of the number of unused times of the next word candidate, the next word prediction section inhibits display of the next word candidate.