Moves up to #4 in Middle East and Africa with 36.3% YTY growth
Grows UAE market share to 13.9% with a 52.8% YTY growth

The latest preliminary results from IDC* for 4Q12 show that Lenovo has taken the #2 position in the EMEA PC market with 11.1% share. The ranking is fuelled by the company’s growth and success in Russia, Germany, Denmark and Lebanon where Lenovo is now ranked #1.

When joining Lenovo in April 2012 EMEA president Gianfranco Lanci outlined his ambition and plans for the company to become a top three PC player in EMEA by 2013. At the time of stating the ambition Lenovo was #5 in the market. Lenovo continues to grow positively, outpacing the market significantly with year to year growth in 2012 of 41.7%, in a market that declined overall -1.6%.

Lanci commented: “In April 2012, we set a clear goal – to become the #3 PC vendor in EMEA and gain more than 10% market share by 2013 – and we have achieved this well in advance of our deadline. These results have given us a solid foundation from which to work in order to achieve our ultimate goal of becoming #1 in EMEA. In the coming year the market will see Lenovo bring even more innovative products to market; dominate the consumer space much more than we have done to date and deliver on our corporate strategy of being a PC+ company – ie designing products that have the additional features and functionality that consumers want – like our Yoga that is a laptop that converts into a tablet or the 27” table PC the Horizon, which showcased at CES.”

The EMEA business has contributed significantly over the last three years in making Lenovo the fastest-growing PC maker among the world’s top vendors with 15 quarters outpacing the overall PC market. This data shows a clear trend line and strong momentum for Lenovo as it sets its sights on profitable, sustainable growth in the PC+ era.

Middle East & Africa (MEA) (Arab World)
In Middle and Africa (MEA), Lenovo has jumped up in the ranking to become the #4 player with 36.3% year to year growth.

Oliver Ebel, executive director and general manager Lenovo Middle East & Africa, added: “Our continued growth in MEA comes as a result of our strong regional operations and commitment to our customers and partners. MEA has become an increasingly strategic region for Lenovo and we are determined to further grow our presence and invest in new growth markets. We are also committed to bringing our latest innovations to the region as we see businesses and consumers in MEA as eager adopters of innovation.”

IDC Q4 2012 Highlights

In the UAE, Lenovo grew its market share to 13.9% from 12.2% last quarter, with a 52.8% YTY growth. Lenovo is currently No.3 in UAE from No.5 last quarter
In Qatar, Lenovo moved up the ranking to No.3 from No.5 with a market share of 13.5% and YTY growth of 43.2%
In Oman, Lenovo is the No.3 with just under 20% YTY growth

In Jordan, Lenovo increased its market share by 6% to 18.8% from last quarter to become the No.2 player with over 140% YTY growth
In Lebanon, Lenovo regained the number one spot with 20.5% market share and 180.6% YTY growth
In Egypt, Lenovo grew its market share to 14.2% with 36.6% YTY growth

In South Africa, Lenovo grew our market share to 12.3%

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As France started military crusader against the Islamic movements who control northern Mali the French government stepped up security in the country expecting retaliatory strikes at the heart of France as the unjust military campaign has caused great destruction in Mali and killed many civilians.
Jihadi hackers did not wait in a forum post at a Jihadi forum Ansar Al Mujahdeen Cyber Jihad Cell said to bringing down the French defense ministry website.

The leader of Ansar Al Deen in Mali accused the French government of launching a crusade to stop them from governing by the law of God and to steal the gold and other resources in th country.

It is worth mentioning that UK and US governments are helping the French crusade with military supplies and drone planes.

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B-Kam.com has just launched; a search engine that brings all Egyptian shopping websites in one place to let shoppers search, compare prices and get the best deals, all from one place.

The site is first price-comparison shopping website in Egypt but not the first in the Arab world as there is Menwayn from Jordan.

On B-kam Shoppers search directly for any product and get results from all the shopping websites instantly. Price comparison of different sellers is so much easier.

Bkam? presents full information about each shopping website in terms of guarantees, delivery, terms of payment, and providing invoices.

However one note About Bkam is that it does not offer a compact view of the different sites that offer the product. You need to click on each one of the vendors site to search for info. It would be much better if it can provide one list showing the item price tag according to the shopping site that sells it.

Statistics show that almost 40% of internet users in the MENA region shop for their stuff online, an excellent opportunity for the online businesses to expand and dominate. With such an excellent potential, Mahmoud Abdel-Fattah, founder of Bkam?, found it necessary to provide a more efficient platform for the online businesses to capture more shoppers. Although the idea is so simple, the development wasn’t all that simple at all. Mahmoud says he owes a lot to eSpace Technologies for acting as a technical advisor throughout the development of B-Kam.com.
Bkam? also released their mobile version in parallel with the full one to allow offline shoppers to search for the best deals on-the-go. In a matter of days, a mobile application will be available to download from both the Apple Store and Android Market.
Sherif Nassar, founder and CEO of Nefsak.com says, “It is a great pleasure to see such a professional service like B-Kam in Egypt. It is not just a price comparison, but a tool for the customers to evaluate the value that they will get from their online shopping experience in just one step. The level of fairness and integrity of the team managing B-Kam, makes us at nefsak.com happy to cooperate with them.”

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The Egyptian revolution is achieving its objectives one after the other in the hard way, with paid souls and blood in the long march for justice, freedom and Independence from domestic and foreign tyranny and conspiracy.

However, Egyptian economy is not doing well. Egypt has a high level of poverty rates, around 40%, its economy is dependent in few things to earn hard currency: tourism, Swiss canal some Gas and what Egyptian workers outside Egypt send back home.

Beside basic human rights and political freedoms the economic case should be dealt with in order to achieve one of the revolution’s objectives: social justice. To that end Egypt must work hard to transform it self into a scientific production and excellence. Producing world class R&D projects that can produce world class startups that can solve problems in different avenues with innovative solutions, products and services.

Egypt has no shortage of great people and scientists like Dr. Ahmed Zewail a Nobel prize winner and a professor chemistry and professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as he has the right vision and plan with his City of Science and Technology. Which was conceptualized back in 1999 but was established right after the blessed Egyptian revolution.

The City of Zewail is becoming a reality now. It offers the right pillars that can help transform Egypt into scientific production and excellence, in helping bring innovation and the out break of innovative tech startups that can compete at the world level which in turn will bring hard currency to Egypt and provide employment to thousands of people and raise the standards of living for Egyptians.

The pillars for the The City are Zewail university, Research Institute , Technology Pyramid or Park, Think tank.

Technology Pyramid:

Will offer gifted entrepreneurs and scientist the opportunity to incubate and develop their new technologies and industries.

The technology Pyramid or technology Park will provide some financial assistance and appropriate space and will take in exchange a share of the startup equity which would help the city generate income while building world class tech companies that can penetrate the international markets.
The Park will also provide R&D center and will invite different multi national tech companies to come up and open research centers. It can do so since it can demonstrate to blue chip companies that it has the skilled work force necessary for such R&D centers to function.

Egyptians will benefit from working with multinationals with gaining more experience and expertise which in turn will help them launch their own tech satrtups. The technology Pyramid will work also as a commercialization arm for inventions coming from other pillars of the city namely the Research Institutes.

Research Institute:
Research  Institute will provide researchfrontiers necessary to provide commercial innovative solutions to problems in these frontiers and they are:

Helmy Institute for Medical Sciences (HIMS)
Center for Aging and Associated Diseases
2. Institute for Nanoscience and Informatics (INI) 
3. Institute for Imaging and Visualization (IIV) 
4. Institute for Energy, Environment and Space (IEES) 
5. Institute for Economics and Global Affairs (IEGA) 
6. Institute for Virtual Education (IVE) 
7. Institute of Basic Sciences (IBS)
Center for Theoretical Physics
 Some fields of research will be particularly relevant to the needs of Egypt and the region. These include R&D in energy, information technology, medicine, and other areas relating to water resources and global climate change.

“In the initial phase, there will be up to twelve research institutes. With the passage of time and beyond its first decade, there may appear the need to create new research institutes, but the uniqueness and distinction of the institution must be strictly maintained”

The institutes will be open to anyone accepting students and researchers from anywhere in the world but priority will be given to Egyptians.

Zewail university:

  The university will carefully train selected students in basic state-of-the-art science and engineering and offer them hands-on research opportunities. The total number of students will not exceed 5000 and any increase must be unanimously approved by the Board of Trustees. The university will be equipped with the most advanced tools and laboratories.

Students of the university will provide the minimum pool of scientists and researchers to carry on research in the different institutes and in launching state-of-the-art tech ventures that can be incubated at the tech park.

Think Tank:

Egypt faces a number of challenges and risks, among them is the Nile, power, housing and so forth. The think tank will carry on scientific analysis of major projects of development and for the assessment of national risks associated with them and they will be then presented to policy makers.

I am are very excited about city of Science and Technology it has the right tech and scientific ecosystems that Egypt needs in order to transform it into a scientific and tech center in the world. The project is registered as a not for profit and will be funded through 2 main means and endowment that will provide monetary resources from profits from its projects and from direct donations. The city did not achieve its objective in collecting the necessarily funds. It has collected around 10% of the money necessarily. It needs your help so if you believe in january25th revolution you should go ahead and donate here to this critical project for the future of Egypt. #EgyptCan

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According to sources in Egypt, Mobile service is offline in Tahrir square in Cairo Egypt, the square is witnessing a new revolt against the military rule in Egypt with around 1 million people demonstrating.

We do not know if it was switched off intentionally by mobile operators -after a request from the government in Egypt – or not. Vodafone one of the mobile telecom operators in Egypt says over Twitter that the service is running and the outage might be due huge traffic.

In the first version of the Egyptian revolution in January this year , one of Husni Mubarak tactics -which did not save him- was to switch mobile network off.

#image credit.

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Preston & Walker Pte Ltd. singapore based investment firm is offering 1 Million USD for the most promising business plan with a global scope.

“Our aim really is to look for the next big thing – whether it is an idea to generate more jobs, to change the way the game is played in a specific industry, to create a more socially responsible world – or even just to inspire us to learn more about ourselves,” said Gareth Walker, who is the company’s founder in a press release.

Participants in the contest cab submit their business plan here, and it will be judged by a team of anonymous millionaire judges. A small registration fee will be charged. For those who are selected, the judges will consider investing a maximum of US $1,000,000 of seed funding, as well as offer help in development of the ideas, serving as mentors to jumpstart the business. Deadline for submissions is December 31, 2011, and winners will be announced on January 31, 2012.

Participants may belong to a start-up or early stage venture.

For more information, including rules and regulations and registration fees, see the competition Web site.

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Google has launched recently gmail SMS chat  in many Arab and some African and Asian countries with a number of mobile operators.



SMS with Gmail enables users to send free text messages (SMS) to  their friends directly from their Gmail accounts.
if the user’s contact replies, the text message response will appear as a reply in Chat.  just like gmail chat gtalk.

Sending and receiving a message from Gmail to any phone is free.

When replying with an SMS from phone to Gmail, you will be charged a regular SMS rate by your mobile provider.



Google has partnered with a number of operators in the region to bring the service here is the list of Arab, African and Asian mobile operators that are supported:

 ( Syria and Sudan are not on the list due to US government sanctions.)

Afghanistan
: Afghan Wireless Communication Company



Algeria
: Nedjma


Angola
: Unite


Bahrain
: Viva, 
Zain


Cameroon
: MTN
, Orange


Congo, Democratic Republic
: Vodacom


Côte d’Ivoire: 
Orange


Ghana
 Airtel, 
Tigo

Guinea
: Orange


Indonesia
:Indosat
, Telkomsel
, Tri


Iraq: 
Zain


”Israel
:” orange
, Pelephone


Jordan
: Zain


Kazakhstan: 
Kcell


Kenya
: Airtel
, orange
, Safaricom,
Yu

Kuwait:
Wataniya, 
Zain

Liberia
: Cellcom


Malawi: 
L Airtel, 
TNM


Malaysia
: DiGi


Maldives
: Dhiraagu
, Wataniya


Mozambique
: Vodacom


Nigeria
: Glo
, Starcomms


Palestinian Territories
: Jawwal
, Wataniya Mobile


Philippines
: Globe
, SMART
, Sun Cellular


Saudi Arabia: 
Mobily, 
STC
, Zain


Senegal
: orange
, Tigo


Sierra Leone
: Comium


Sri Lanka
: Dialog,
 Etisalat, 
Mobitel


Tanzania
:Vodacom
,Tigo


Thailand
: dtac, 
True Move


Tunisia
: Tunisiana


Uganda
: Orange, 
MTN
, Uganda Telecom


United States: 
All operators


Uzbekistan: 
Ucell


Zambia
: Airtel
, MTN
, Zamtel





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Telecom research agency BuddeComm has launched its Africa – Fixed and Wireless Broadband and Internet Markets and Forecasts report.
It says that “Large parts of Africa gained access to international fibre bandwidth for the first time via submarine cables in 2009 and 2010. In other parts of the continent, additional fibre systems have brought competition to a previously monopolised market. More cables are expected to go online in 2011 and 2012. This has led to massive investments into terrestrial fibre backbone infrastructure to take the new bandwidth to population centres in the interior and across borders into landlocked countries.
Africa’s Internet and broadband sector is set to benefit the most from these developments. Wholesale prices for Internet bandwidth have come down by as much as 90% from previous levels based on satellite access, and the cost savings are slowly being passed on to the retail level as well. Broadband is rapidly replacing dial-up as the preferred access method, and this process is already virtually completed in the continent’s more developed markets.
Most African countries now have commercial DSL services, but their growth is limited by the poor geographical reach of the fixed-line networks. Improvements in Internet access have therefore been mostly confined to the capital cities so far. However, the rapid spread of mobile data and third-generation (3G) broadband services is changing this, with the mobile networks bringing Internet access to many areas outside of the main cities for the first time.
Many fixed-line incumbents have reacted by rolling out fixed-wireless access networks to expand their geographical reach. The technology of choice has been CDMA-2000 which supports broadband data rates with an upgrade to EV-DO standard. WiMAX technology, however, offers higher data rates and has gained ground in Africa with well over 100 networks already in operation. And also traditional copper fixed lines and DSL have seen a renaissance in some markets on the back of an increasing demand for broadband access.”

Top ten African Internet market penetration rates – early-2011
Country and Market penetration
Morocco
49%
Seychelles
41%
Tunisia
37%
Cape Verde
30%
Nigeria
28%
Egypt
27%
Mauritius
25%
Kenya
21%
Senegal
16%
Libya
14%
(Source: BuddeComm based on ITU data)

Full report can be found here.

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2 days ago I arrived  to my beloved country Egypt. I am planning to stay here for few days, in mind with  a new project that would help push entrepreneurship in Egypt and the region and I would like to meet the startup and tech community here.

The post title says that ArabCrunch is in Egypt, not that ArabCrunch is not here, it is. We already have Arabic tech writers and team members who are Egyptians like Mohammad Sayed and Moemen Mohammed, our security partner Spirula Systems and above all our readers and fans.

I would like in this trip to meet with everyone startups, VCs, geeks and our readers. So we might have a small meetup soon.

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Tomorrow is Eid Al Fitr in most Muslims countries. In this occasion I send my greetings (see my Video below) to All Muslims worldwide and specially AC’s Muslim reader: Happy Eid, Eid Mubarak and May Allah accept from me and you. If you are not Muslim then I also wish you a happy Tuesday  :).

What Is Eid Ul Fitr?

Muslims celebrate ‘Eid ul Fitr on the first day of Shawwal — the tenth month of the Islamic calendar, following the month of Ramadhan (in which the revelation started and ended 20+ years later, and which is also the month of fasting). Following a Lunar calendar, Muslims mark the beginning of the month with the sighting of the new crescent.

The month long fasting of Ramadan culminates into the festival of ‘Eid-ul-Fitr (the Festival of Fast-Breaking). It is a festival of joy, family reunion and thanksgiving to Almighty God. The giving of a special charity for this occasion is obligatory. This is known as Zakat. Muslims dress in holiday attire, attend a special community prayer in the morning, and visit friends and relatives. Greetings of “‘Eid mubarak,” or “a blessed ‘Eid” are exchanged.
Eid Ul Fitr Prayer

:

Allaho-Akber, Allaho-Akber. La ila-ha ill-lal-lah. Allaho-Akber, Allaho-Akber. Wa-lilahill hamd. 

(Allah is great, Allah is great. There is no god but Allah. Allah is great, Allah is great. And all praises are for Allah).

Here are some links to websites that helps you know more about Islam:

Islam Guide.

Islam Web

Islamic Tube

Just Quran

Best Islamic Sites

Sisters Magazine

#image by creativesam,

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Google has launched Insights MENA an interactive website that provides research data about the online behavior of urban consumers in five key Arab markets: Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and UAE. This tool comes handy for online professionals, entrepreneurs, mobile apps developers and is alarming for tyrant Arab governments who can see how the shift of media usage and information control is going away from their hands to the internet,

as the research reveals that media usage via the internet is close to TV and newspapers.

The research was conducted by The Nielsen Company Dubai.

For Internet usage rates, UAE comes in top with 84% then KSA with 70% then Morocco with 51%.

Most internet users in UAE are not new to the internet as 52% has been online since more than 5 years, followed by KSA with 34% and only 17% of Egypt for being online 5 years and more. As for being only 1-2 years online Egypt comes first with 29%, jordan second with 23%.

In All countries, 83% of internet users access the internet from home, 26% from office, 20% from cyber caffe, 15% family and friends and 14% in the go. 70% access the internet daily for 11.4 hours from home and 8.7 from office.

The most frequent online activities are: visiting an online portal, using a search engine, send/ receive emails, use instant messaging, visit and access a social network. Reading writing a blog post came also as an important activity with happening an average 4 times a week.

90% of users own mobile, KSA and UAE has the highest percentage of internet enabled mobiles 69% then 58%, morocco at 28%, Egypt 41% Jordan 51%.

Again UAE and KSA has the highest internet usage via mobile 57% UAE 54% for KSA, then morocco 24%, jordan 18%, Egypt 22%. Which means targeting both KSA and Egypt with mobile apps is more important than other markets, even though UAE has a higher penetration rate than Egypt, but 22% percentage from a population of 10s of millions is greater than 57% of few millions in UAE.

As for E-commerce 12% form UAE purchased online, while 19% did online research, then comes KSA with 5% buying online, morocco and jordan stand at 2% and Egypt at 1%. What are the reasons for these numbers? GDP per capita is higher in KSA and UAE than other countries.

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As in most countries in the world Ramadan is one day to start. a new startup has emerged to provide Islamic mobile apps for all devices. which would be handy to help Muslims during the holly month.

Islamic Appstore provide Muslims direct access to thousands of Islam-oriented contents in different sections such as The Holy Quran, Ahadith, Prayers, Supplications, Ringtones, Wallpapers, nasheed… All what users need is to connect to www.islamicapp.com using their mobile, tablet or Smartphone browsers and start downloading various contents.

Islamic appstore is also available for Developers as they can start publishing their contents and apps using the developer portal.

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Robert Murdoch’s Newscorp owns many influential media outlets in UK, USA, Australia and other countries in the world. Many believe that no prime minister in England can be elected without his newspapers and media outlets’s blessings, that might also be true for any U.S president. His Fox news station in is one of the most followed news stations in America and its is known to support Zionist agendas and in growing islamophobia sentiment across the U.S.

But that empire is collapsing after the phone hacking scandal of his U.K news of the world has made against thousands of people, now the tide is turing on News corp.

Public outrage against News corp illegal practice is growing, and the world is realizing the extend of media power that is controlled by one family. Many now call to boycott news corp and its publications.

MurdochAlert is a Firefox add-on warns you whenever you visit one of the 100+ Murdoch Family-controlled websites. The add on says If you’re not ready to block them all, MurdochAlert can warn you instead. “Also it’s handy for identifying news sources controlled by the Murdoch Family. MurdochAlert warns you whenever you visit one of the 100+ Murdoch Family-controlled websites. If you’re not ready to block them all, MurdochAlert can warn you instead. Also it’s handy for identifying news sources controlled by the Murdoch Family. “

The browser add-ons developer explains why it was developed by saying:

“NewsCorp agents in multiple countries have been arrested for hacking into the phones and computers of at least thousands of innocent people. Since the Murdoch family controls 100+ high-traffic domains, it is difficult for average users to know which sites could potentially place them at risk. 

MurdochAlert identifies the domains that may place users at risk for Murdoch-related hacking. MurdochAlert shows a bottom warning box whenever you visit a Murdoch-controlled sited. “

As for Chrome there “Murdoch Block”, a chrome browser add-one that Blocks websites owned and operated by Newscorp.

If you need a list of websites controlled by newscorp of the world you can see the list here.

Via ArabCrunch Arabic Edition.

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It’s arguably proven that the internet had played the most important role as a tool that led to the successful revolution in Egypt, eMarketing Egypt made a study to explore how Egyptians dealt with the internet during the revolution.

Ossama El-Badawy, the Online Competitive Intelligence Manager, stated that it is obvious that the internet in Egypt witnessed a dramatic growth after the revolution; the following figures just give a quick view for the current interment status in Egypt:
- 23+ million Internet users,
- 7.7+ million Facebook users,
- And 100%+ Twitter users growth during recent months

The survey was dedicated to explore in details the way Egyptians dealt with the internet during the revolution, the main findings can be listed as below:
-  28% of internet users purely relied on the Internet to stay tuned with the revolution news and updates
- This percentage goes up to 63% among those who participated in the demonstrations
- The Internet had solely shaped the views of 17% of users regarding the recent events
-  As expected, Facebook had been the prime tool used to tie up with events and news as mentioned be 71% of users
- Finally, 45% of users will increase their reliance on the Internet to tie up with coming news and events

I hope more Arab tyrants are toppled soon.

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E-commerce in the region is reaching the tipping point, as the market seems more mature to deal with this type of commerce, yesterday LivingSocial one of the leading group buying sites in the world acquired GoNabit.

Earlier this month, Ideavelopers closed a deal with Sherif Nassar, Founder and CEO of nefsak.com, where Ideavelopers will invest 10 million EGP (1.67639 million U.S. dollars) in his company. Founded in 2008.

Nefask says it has been the fastest growing Egyptian online retailer with sales increasing five times year over year. Today nefsak’s online catalogue has over 18,000 products covering a wide range of categories from computers and electronics to home decoration and fashion. The investment according to a press release will help nefsak develop into a household brand and scale its operations to meet growth expectations.

In his comment on the investment, Ideavelopers Managing Partner, Tarek Assaad said, “We are delighted to work with nefsak, we believe they are the leader in their market. The level of dedication and passion that Sherif Nassar demonstrated while building this company is impressive. These characteristics are essential in an entrepreneur whose aspiration is to build an amazon.com for the Middle East”.

This investment comes as Ideavelopers’ third investment in an e-commerce related company. In mid 2008, Ideavelopers had invested in SMART Cards Applications, a company that runs an electronic network for distributing food rations. Later that year, it also invested in Fawry, the leading provider of payments services. “We believe that e-commerce is reaching an infliction point,” said Ziad Mokhtar, Partner at Ideavelopers, “the people who were 10 years old when the Internet first came to Egypt in the late 90s are now entering the workforce. Adding the increased proliferation of broadband, this translates into a critical mass of users who feel safe, spend more time, and can spend more money online.”

Sherif Nassar started attracting the attention of local and international investors in late 2010. “I chose Ideavelopers”, Sherif says, “because I knew they can help support the company as it grows. They can provide necessary funds, sound strategic advice, and access to local networks”. Both, Tarek Assaad and Ziad Mokhtar from Ideavelopers, as well as Mr. Sameh Farid have joined the board of directors of nefsak.

Ideavelopers is Egyptian based venture capital firm a subsidiary of EFG-Hermes Private Equity. The firm manages the Technology Development Fund – a $50 million fund focused on early stage technology companies. To date, the firm invested over $25 million in 17 companies operating inside and outside Egypt.

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Arab Spring had an impact on BCC Arabic website visitors as with all other news sites. At Arab Advisors Media Telecom Convergence conference today in Amman, Jordan, Falko Mortiboys and Rufus Weston from Digital Insights at BBC World Service shared their insight in how Arab Spring affected growth in audiance at BCC Arabic, and we would like to share 10 interesting insights with you:
1- First Spike of Traffic After Bin Ali got ousted. traffic for tunisia uprisings was relatively low until ben ali went.

2- Record Audience During the Egyptian Revolution and Mubarak’s Resignation.

3- Traffic spike picked up during the Libyan revolution and when Momar Gaddafi appeared on TV and when the first Air Strike came against Libya

4- During Arab Spring Spikes BBCArabic showed an increase in Live TV streaming

5- Arab spring has resulted in 15 fold increase in traffic to web site from social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. I think that would increase if they add the native Like Facebook button instead of share and the native Twitter Retweet Button.

6- 65% of BBC Arabic news web site visitors are now from Arab world compared to 45% before the Arab Spring.

7- BBC Arabic’s Mobile picked up traffic after the Egyptian revolution and unlike Web it remind high, 6 month ago mobile videos were low.

8- Post Arab Spring BBC Arabic mobile video page is the most popular after its homepage. BBC Arabic Android App is coming soon.

9- Most popular pages during the spikes were the live-text page which gave users info real-time

10- Rufus Weston told ArabCrunch “that we estimate that for major news spikes, we retain approximately 3% new audiences.” and it is a key driver of BBC Arabic’s growth strategy.

BBC Arabic site has 1.6 million unique users per week and 1.5 million pageviews per day. During the Egypt revolution traffic was much higher than the average 1.6 Unique users.

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Cairo, Egypt based iPhoneIslam has developed a program to turn iPad into a working phone that also can run facetime.

The app has not been launched but iPhoneIslam says they will launch it soon. the program can send and receive calls and text massages iPhoneIslam says it needs jailbreaking to work:




Here is the video to demo iPhoneIslam achievement:

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Shutting down the internet cost egypt millions of dollars according to studies in the mater, however that crime did not go unpunished.

An Egyptian court has ordered former egyptian president Husni Mubarak and other former officials to pay 90 Million USD for shutting down the internet and cell phone networks during the Egyptian revolution.

According to Aljazeera Mubarak is sentenced to pay 200 million Egyptian pounds (1 Egyptian pound = 0.16787 U.S. dollars), former prime minister Ahmed Nathef 40 million EP, and former interior minister Habib Al Adli 300  million EGP for damages that “the national economy has suffered.”

It is worth mentioning that the former regime blocked Twitter other websites before shutting down the internet.

#image credits.

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A team in University of Alabama in Birmingham, USA have discovered 1,000 tombs, 3,000 ancient settlements and 17 pyramids via satellite infrared survey.

According to BBC the team analysed images from satellites orbiting 700km above the earth, equipped with cameras so powerful they can pin-point objects less than 1m in diameter on the earth’s surface.

Infra-red imaging was used to highlight different materials under the surface.

#image credits

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MIT Arab Business Plan competition which organize a yearly business plan competition for Arab startups has announced round 3 finalists.

12 teams from 30 semi-finalist teams hat qualified for Round 3. The 12 teams will fly to Tunisia and attend a coaching session with Booz & Co. guiding them through how to better perform in oral presentations and pitch their ideas in front of investors. The final award ceremony will be taking place in Tunisia on Friday, June 17. The 3 winning teams will receive up to $65,000 in prize money to help them take their business to the next level.

Here is the list of teams as per MIT Arab Business Plan Competition website:

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In his speech in front of time 100 were Wael was chosen among of Time magazine nfluential people, Wael said that he is not a hero and all what he did is simple create an event on facebook and mark it with #25Jan Revolution, from “we are all Khaled Saed” page, that event marked the spark of the Egyptian revolution which ousted president Husni Mobarak. He also said that he is a proud Muslim Arab and Egyptian. (me too ) Here is the video with Arabic subtitles:




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Apple announced that its iPad 2 is coming to Japan today, Hong Kong, India, “Israel”, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Turkey and UAE on April 29 and will sell at the same US suggested prices of $499 (US) for the 16GB model, $599 (US) for the 32GB model and $699 (US) for the 64GB model. iPad 2 with Wi-Fi + 3G will be available for a suggested retail price of $629 (US) for the 16GB model, $729 (US) for the 32GB model and $829 (US) for the 64GB model. iPad 2 with Wi-Fi will be available in China on May 6, Apple said in a press release further international availability will be announced at a later date.

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Egypt’s Ministry of communications and information technology  (MCIT) has released ICT indicators in brief for February of 2011. The report says that there are 71.46 million Mobile subscribers in January growing at 1.13 % from previous month with annual growth at 27.95% while Mobile penetration rate is at 91.32 %.

As for the Internet the report says that there are 23.51 millions internet users in January growing at 2.12% from previous month and growing 39.61% annually. Internet penetration rate in January was 30.05% from the population growing at 8.14% annually. While the Proportion of households using the internet from home was 32.76% growing at 7.25% annually.

Another interesting point from the report is that the number of Internet Mobile subscribers is a growing trend: as in January 11.32% of Mobile subscribers use Internet via mobile handsets that is around 8.09 million mobile internet users, ADSL subscribers are 1429.40 thousand.

As for the number of ICT companies ( Information and communications technology companies) the number is 3972 companies in January growing around 1% over the previous month and 13.49% over the previous year, these companies employed 205.28 thousand people and have issues capital of 44870.5 Million Egyptian Pounds.

To get the full report you can view the embed below:

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Wael Ghonim Google’s head of marketing tweeted that he is taking a sabbatical from Google to start a tech Non government organization to “fight poverty and foster eduction.”

Wael has been one of the admins of Facebook page We Are All “Khaled Saed” page, Khaled Saed is an activist from Alexandria who was beaten to death by Egyptian secret police for posting a Youtube video that shows evidence of police corruption. The page attracted 10 of thousands of followers and so far has 1,173,996 members. The page call for protests in the events that lead to the ousting of former Egyptian president Husni Mubarak was crucial.

In February Wael went missing in Egypt to later we get the info that he was arrested and was released on 7th of February to emerge as one of the Egyptian revolution leaders.

We will update you here with more info about the NGO once we get them.

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Whether an applications’ developer, a techie genius or just a student or an employee with a good idea for a new mobile application and a flair for technology, LINK Development and ArpuPlus will help make it happen through “Bananas Factory”, a virtual community that they launched and that allows them to see their idea come to life .

Both LINK Development and ArpuPlus have pledged to draw on their own domain expertise, business and marketing capabilities to support Arab mobile application developers as well as creative minds, in their quest to populate the mobile applications world with innovative, informative, useful and fun applications targeted at users in the region and around the world.

Developers will get the technical tools and assistance to create new applications, market and monetize them. They will be supported by a downloadable Software Development Kit (SDK) that contains a powerful drag-and-drop, cross-platform application creation tools as well as a “Developers’ Community,” a discussion platform for knowledge exchange.

Already have an application posted on another store and would like it to have wider reach? The Bananas Factory stores will also host these mobile applications, to expand the reach of these applications.

Not a developer? No problem. If someone has the idea but does not have enough technical skills to develop it, all that needs to be done is to submit the idea to www.BananasFactory.com . The engineers from LINK Development will take it from there and develop it for them, while ArpuPlus will help them market the application on stores and different platforms. This will be done on a revenue-sharing basis.

This new venture is being announced to the world of applications developers and innovative thinkers on the second day of Planet of the Apps Arabia, which discusses future trends in mobile applications and the opportunities and challenges they present to businesses.

Both LINK Development and ArpuPlus are part of OT Ventures Group.

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