Tag: Mobile

AdMob To Be Acquired By Google For $750 Million In Stock

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AdMobJust a few hours earlier, it was announced that a definitive agreement was signed for mobile advertising network AdMob to be acquired by Google for $750 Million in stock.

AdMob was founded in January 2006 by Lebanese entrepreneur Omar Hamoui, as a mobile advertising marketplace, offering solutions for discovery, branding and monetization on the mobile web. It was able to attract investments from Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, DFJ Growth Fund and Northgate Capital.

The company grew to take a lead in display advertising on smartphone platforms, such as Apple’s iPhone OS and Google’s Android, working with thousands of advertisers to serve mobile ads on their publisher network of over 15,000 websites and mobile applications. AdMob received 10.2 billion total ad requests in September of this year, and has served more than 125 billion mobile ads since its inception.

With this deal Google aims to strengthen their push into mobile advertising, complementing the solutions they already have, and roll out more effective tools for creating, serving and analyzing emerging mobile ad formats.

The deal should also bring mobile advertising to the forefront and get more people interested in the space.

Google has created a specific site to talk about the AdMob deal and its benefits here: Google’s acquisition of AdMob.

This deal marks Google’s second acquisition of a company founded by an Arab entrepreneur, the first being their September 2007 acquisition of mobile social network Zingku, that was founded by Jordanian entrepreneur Sami Shalabi in May 2006.

Mobile Monday Morocco, Casablanca, November 3rd 2009

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The 5th edition of Mobile Monday Morocco has been announced and will be taking place this coming “Tuesday”, November 3rd 2009, which would make it more of a Mobile Tuesday, but that doesn’t sound as cool, I guess.

Mobile Monday MarocThe event will be taking place at l’Office des Changes in Casablanca, from 6:30PM to 8:30PM.

The program of the event will be as follows:

  • 6:45PM : Presentation of Mobile Monday
  • 7:00PM : 4 presentations, 4 visions of the present and future of mobility:
    • MobileWorks 3D : Search and content accessibility on mobile devices (Christine Maxwell)
    • Online Advertising : Online advertising « from web to mobile »
    • Lemon Way (France) : Mobile Banking solution
    • WebyPass : Social networks through mobile
    • ART UP : Mobile Film Festival Morocco
  • 7:45PM : Networking, free discussions, partner connections.

This edition of Mobile Monday is happening on the sides of the Moroccan leg of the regional IT trade show Med-IT which is taking place in Casablanca, Morocco, from the 3rd to the 5th of November 2009.

For more information on Mobile Monday in Morocco and to sign up for the event, you can visit the official site: Mobile Monday Maroc.

Kotob Arabia Bets On Mobile Fueling Arab e-Book Revolution

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KotobArabiaKotob Arabia, a Cairo-based online publisher of more than 4,000 Arabic e-books, and its founder and director Ramy Habeeb, foresee that mobile phones’ deep market penetration in the region, combined with the most popular e-book readers’ high price tags and inability to read Arabic’s right-to-left script, make the mobile phone a platform of choice for any coming e-book revolution in the Arab world.

Kotob Arabia recently signed a deal to create the first Arabic mobile book reader with Blackbetty Mobilmedia, a Viennese company that creates software that make books readable on mobile phones. The partners plan to present a prototype of the new Arabic mobile e-book reader at next month’s Frankfurt Book Fair.

Blackbetty and Kotobarabia plan to roll out a premium SMS billing system in which e-book purchases would show up on a buyer’s phone bill, starting with Vodafone in Germany, then Vodafone in Egypt and other mobile networks across the region.

Kotob Arabia became an affiliate of Sarmady, the popular Egyptian internet portal that was acquired by Vodafone Egypt last year, and so it already has a relationship with the company that should make it easier for them to roll out their mobile e-book service with them.

In May, the company made an important step of switching from a traditional e-book sales approach to a subscription service, where readers pay a subscription fee and then get access to the full book catalogue. This would give readers access to the list of books they know as well as to books by other authors who aren’t as famous. This way the reader benefits, and on the other hand all authors who have their e-books on the service get a chance to be read and start making money out of it.

This subscription model also is quite an appealing one for the mobile realm, one that can’t be realised in more developed markets because of book price regulation.

Source: The National

Bayt.com Launches New Mobile Version Of Their Job Search

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Bayt.comBayt.com, the Middle East’s leading job site have launched a new mobile version of their portal, which will enable job seekers to access the Bayt.com website quickly and easily on their mobile devices, while on the move.

Job seekers can simply enter m.bayt.com into the web browser of their mobile device, then instantly search all of the jobs that are currently available on the main Bayt.com site.

As part of Bayt.com mobile, job seekers will be able to apply from their device to any of the listed jobs that are of interest to them on the site, simply by using their stored CVs, and adding a cover note if required.

Bayt.com also plans to add a number of additional services to make the search for jobs even more efficient for job seekers on the move.

Job seekers will have the option to refresh their stored CV from their device, as if they were using their PC. When job seekers have found positions from their device but want to save them for applying at a later stage, they will have the option of emailing their found jobs to their Bayt.com account, or to their personal email.

Furthermore, the mobile site will be developed to allow jobs seekers to search for positions by sector and industry, as per the existing website. It will then offer the option to view how many times their CV has been viewed by employers, in addition to other CV statistics – right on their mobile device.

The service adds more value to employers by making their postings automatically available on the mobile version of the site, thereby giving their job offers more exposure.

Total Country Connectivity Measure For The Arab World

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The annual results of Arab Advisors Group’s Total Country Connectivity Measure (TCCM) reveal substantial –mostly cellular service driven- improvements in overall scores. The Arab broadband Internet markets also registered very positive growth.

The United Arab Emirates is the most connected country in the Arab World according to the Arab Advisors Group’s annual report; Bahrain and Saudi Arabia followed in second and third ranks respectively.

The Arab Advisors Group calculates its Total Country Connectivity Measure (TCCM) by adding the household mainlines penetration, cellular penetration, and Internet users penetration rates in each country. The household mainlines penetration is measured by dividing the residential mainlines by the number of households in each country.

The TCCM shows the extent of connectivity of individuals in a certain country whether via fixed lines, cellular lines and/or Internet. Of course, there will be an overlap since many individuals will be using these three communications technologies at the same time. However, the measure still yields an accurate and informative picture on the level of ICT services penetration in each country.

As previously mentioned the Total Country Connectivity Measure results for 2009 revealed that UAE, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia still dominate the top three spots as the highest adopters of telecommunication services, with values of 321%, 249% and 248% respectively.
The results for the rest of the Arab World came as follows: Qatar (205%), Libya (199%), Kuwait (184%), Oman (170%), Algeria (141%), Jordan (141%), Syria (129%), Egypt (128%), Tunisia (128%), Morocco (127%), Lebanon (125%), Iraq (100%), Palestine (95%), Mauritania (74%), Yemen (55%) and in last place Sudan with a TCCM value of 34%.

“Only four out of the nineteen countries covered in this year’s study have a total country connectivity measure that exceeds a 200%. This indicates a substantial potential for more growth in most Arab markets, especially in the under penetrated Internet markets.” Mr. Andrawes Snobar, Arab Advisors’ Research Manager wrote in the report.

Ayna Adds Satellite Imagery To Mobile Version Of Ayna Maps

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Ayna Giza Satellite Image

As promised when they first launched the mobile version of their mapping service, Ayna.com has gone on and launched a satellite imagery feature for this mobile version, allowing users to see a high-resolution aerial snapshot of the location they are looking for.

Users of the service can now enter any address in the Middle East on Ayna maps, and click on the “Satellite” link to locate and zoom into the wanted area till having the closest image.

The satellite imagery service on the mobile is empowered by DigitalGlobe technology and updated for 2008, allowing users to view the entire world and zoom into 26 Middle East and North African cities, with streets, malls, points of interest, geographic information, buildings and more, directly from their mobile phones.

The satellite map has the same features existing on the normal map: finding points of interest, getting directions, saving favorites, sharing with friends …etc.

The satellite imagery feature should also be available on the web version of Ayna maps soon.

# Ayna Mobile Maps

ATH Moves To Invest In Mobile Technology In The Arab World

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Accelerator Technology HoldingsAccelerator Technology Holdings (ATH) has announced that it is working on establishing a company to fund investment in mobile technology in the Arab region.

ATH is a holding company that acts through a group of companies established in Jordan and Bahrain to identify, invest in and help build best of breed ventures in the ICT value chain in the Arab world, and that has already funded a number of Arab startups through its IV Holdings venture capital arm.

They’re currently working on raising an initial US$10 million in funds, after which they will move on to hiring a management team to launch and run this new company.

They are particularly looking at areas like security and authentication, based on their expectations that financial transactions over mobile platforms will become very widespread in the region in the future, especially with several of the region’s big mobile network operators launching mobile payment initiatives recently.

This new company will operate as a cross between venture capitalist and commercial investor, building ties and working with foreign companies to bring new mobile technologies to the region. They’ve already started talking to businesses in the UK, Switzerland and Norway about bringing their mobile products to the Arab world.

# Source: The National

Etisalat Launches Own New Instant Messaging Service

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Etisalat MessengerEtisalat, the UAE telecoms operator, announced the launch of its own IM (Instant Messaging) service for its mobile phone and internet customers.

Etisalat Messenger is similar in concept to other chatting applications like Yahoo! Messenger, MSN and Google Talk, allowing subscribers to send messages in both Arabic and English between mobile phones and computers.

With this move, Etisalat aims to target the young generation in the UAE with whom instant messaging is one of the more popular forms of communication.

Conversations in Etisalat’s messenger can also include multimedia; for example pictures, video and sound clips. Messages sent while recipients are offline are delivered to them as SMS or MMS messages.

Etisalat Messenger comes in two packages; one with unlimited usage at a fixed monthly rate and another which enables users to send and receive unlimited messages for a fixed session period of 15 minutes at a per session cost.

For more details about Etisalat Messenger, pricing and activation; check the product page on the official site: Etisalat Messenger.

[Via: ITP]

Tunisiana Launches A New Fund For Value-Added Services

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TunisianaTunisiana, the first private mobile operator in Tunisia,  just announced the launch of a fund for value-added services projects.

This move follows the recent publication of a new law in Tunisia relating to the sharing of revenue between telecom operators and value-added services providers.

So in an effort to empower and encourage more entrepreneurs and startups to launch such value-added services, it has created this fund, wherein each project can benefit of up to 30,000 Tunisian Dinars of funding.

The announcement of the fund was made a few days ago at the opening of Tunisiana’s value-added services event where a number of new services were announced by a number of companies, mainly in the areas of business solutions, entertainment and accessibility.

It’s a really smart and welcome move by Tunisiana, and it should be interesting to follow and see how well it goes and how many projects will see the light of day because of it.

I definitely think it’s a model other mobile operators around the Arab world should experiment with for the benefit of everyone: theirselves, these new businesses and their clients.

[Source: WebManagerCenter]

More Arabic Websites From The Gulf, But Few Visitors?

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Arabic websites based in the Gulf are increasing in number but the locals are not using them much, according to experts discussing “Investing in Future Media” at the TMT Finance and Investment 2009 forum that was recently held at Sharq Village hotel in Doha, Qatar.

The opening presentation at the forum expressed concern over the fact that although the number of Arabic websites was increasing, these were rarely visited by those who know the language because they were not satisfied with the contents of the sites.

“This is still an open question,” said Mohamad Murrad, Principal, Vice President and Partner of Booz & Company, when asked if Arabic websites from the region can compete successfully with English websites.

Based on the study explained in the presentation, although there are now more Arabic websites in the region than before, their number is still small compared to that of English websites. Another fact is that most people in the Gulf access the popular sites such as Google, Facebook and Yahoo.

The same study highlighted the growth of the mobile platform, on which it is believed Arabic content can get a market share since 99 percent of the sales in the telecommunications industry are derived from it.

Mobile content is already on the rise and has high penetration in the region but the online network infrastructure for Arabic is still very limited, the study disclosed. It said SMS/MMS-based advertising offerings, although still small, showed strong growth.

Online ads are not very effective in the region, fetching just $2 per user, which is way behind the worldwide average of $27 per user and $59 per user in the United States. “The problem with online ads is very much skeptical, that is how to reach and capture the audience,” said one of the speakers.

[Source: The Peninsula]