Home › Archive for ArabNet › Page 2

Category: ArabNet

By Posted on Posted in ArabNet, Mobile No Comments

When was the last you sent a text message (SMS), question asked to smartphone users. Maybe some are still using SMS when connecting with people who are not into sophisticated phones, the smart ones.

So basically the industry of SMS will come to an end or at least see itself shrinking, except for companies who still believe that this is a cheap marketing tool and keep in feeding your phone with crap messages about shoes sales, valentine flowers, and so on… and most of the messages end up being deleted and most of the time, before even reading them.

But it seems that eventually the SMS market still have some potential. It has been estimated by the International Telecommunications Union that 6.1 trillion SMS messages were sent in 2010. That’s over 16.7 billion messages per day. 696 million messages per hour. 1.16 million messages per minute. And 193,429 texts in a second.

So who is replacing this niche business? It is called Mobile Instant Messaging.

The smartphone users are invaded by mobile instant messaging apps and they are built for almost all mobile platform, but not unified till now and not everyone uses the same IM client, so still this needs to be fixed by app builders.

I am not quite sure if mobile IM will be as profitable as SMS, but it will take the mobile service providers many years to work this out until data access becomes as cheap as sending an SMS and until all users are playing with smartphones.

For business travelers, still email is the #1 tool to send one to many messages, to avoid high roaming costs, plus almost all mobile IM requires to sign-in (except BBM and that is why it’s still the No.1 threat) and users tend to forget signing in every time they turn on their mobile phones.

Until SMS comes to an end, let us wait and see new mobile IM apps emerging and the latest news in this sector was the Facebook acquisition of Beluga for an undisclosed amount.

To know more about what is happening in the mobile platforms and applications, consider visiting the ArabNet 2011 Shift Digital Summit, from March 22-25, in Beirut-Lebanon, which will draw over 1,000 attendees and 80 speakers from around the world. It will include a Developer Day (March 22), Two Forum Days (March 23 & 24), and a Community Day (March 25).

By Posted on Posted in ArabNet No Comments

The ArabNet 2011 Shift Digital Summit, the largest gathering for the Arab web/mobile industry, will be kicking off with a Developer Day on March 22, targeted at engineers, developers, and techies from across the region. It will include programming case studies, tutorials, and in depth workshops by lead engineers from top regional and global companies. Some of the topics that will be discussed include developing mobile apps for different platforms like Google’s Android and cross-platform development frameworks like Appcelerator’s Titanium.

The day will also include talks on popular content management systems like WordPress as well as user interface and user experience issues. These subjects and more will be taken up by speakers from various leading companies from the region and beyond such as Cleartag, eSpace, Zedna, BORN Interactive, and Google. At the end of the day, attendees will have the opportunity to take part in exciting competitions and Sprints to develop applications to grow the Arabic web.

The Two-Day Forum, which will take place on March 23 and 24, will include discussion panels, keynotes, 1-on-1 interviews, workshops, and rapid-fire Q &A sessions, as well as the yearly Ideathon and Startup Demo competitions for entrepreneurs. This year’s Forum will focus on the latest trends and technologies in Social and Mobile, the hottest developments in the web industry.

Some of the topics that will be covered are the Mobile Application Landscape, Social Media and Marketing, Social Commerce, E-Payment Challenges and Solutions, Social and Mobile Gaming, Online Media Buying, Streaming Media, Digital Content, and Tech/Mobile for Good. Speakers include top executives from Microsoft, Google, TechCrunch, Seedcamp, Meydan, Aramex, Sarmady, Intigral, Groupon, Effective Measure, Ericsson, Ideavelopers, Souktel, Travian Games, Nokia, Communicate, The National and many others.

Exciting developments for the Ideathon competition include a prize of two weeks worth of development services offered by eSpace to the top three ideas to help them build prototypes.

For more information, please visit the ArabNet 2011 Shift Digital Summit website.

By Posted on Posted in ArabNet No Comments

ArabNet is an international conference held in Beirut that brings together the cream of the crop in web business, from the Arab World, Europe and Silicon Valley, to discuss internet trends and emerging opportunities. It provides a center stage for regional entrepreneurs to showcase their ideas and connect with incubators, venture capitalists, angel investors, established internet companies, NGO’s and influential bloggers.

ArabNet 2010 was a huge success, gathering over 500 attendees from 13 countries across the MENA, Europe and Silicon Valley and over 60 speakers from leading global and regional companies, including Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo!Maktoob, Cisco, Aramex, Bank Audi, TwoFour54, and National Net Ventures.

This year, we’re going double in size. Spanning over 4 days, from March 22-25, in Beirut, the ArabNet 2011 Shift Digital Summit will draw over 1,000 attendees and 80 speakers from around the world. It will include a Developer Day (March 22), Two Forum Days (March 23 & 24), and a Community Day (March 25).