A New Arab Advisors Group‘s survey conducted on February 2012 of cellular users in Kuwait reveals some details on smartphones and tablets adoption and usage patterns. The survey probed general cellular usage habits, smartphones awareness in addition to tablets availability among cellular users in Kuwait.
The survey revealed that iPad is the preferred choice of housholds that uses tablets and that 51.3% of the total cellular handsets used by the respondents are smartphones. More than half (58.5%) of smartphone users who use applications prefer the English language for their applications.
Respondents were randomly called through a randomly generated table of cellular phone numbers for each of the three cellular operators in Kuwait: Zain, Wataniya and Viva. The survey results encompass answers from 750 cellular users. The survey yields a confidence level of 99% with a margin of error of less than 5%.
“The survey revealed that 82.2% of the respondents who download applications download social networking applications, followed by games applications (60.7%) and then news applications (41.1%).” Ms. Noura Abdulhadi, Arab Advisors Project Manager, commented.

Saudi Arabia occupied the first rank among the countries with the highest proportion of mobile phone users in the world with a ratio of 188%, followed by Vietnam and Oman in the second and third places respectively, according to a recent study.
The study conducted by the United Nations Conference on Trade and development (UNCTAD) indicated that this percentage is by far the highest when compared to the other Arab Gulf states which in turn filled advanced positions in the list with Oman being ranked second with a rate of 165%, followed by Kuwait (160%) and the UAE (145%) respectively.
In his comment on the results, the Mobile Channels Company’s (MCC) General Manager, Salem Alenzi, said: “The kingdom of Saudi Arabia has scored a high growth percentage in the number of mobile phone users between the years 2005 and 2010. This proportion duplicated three times over this five year period, while it did not exceed a ratio 59% in 2005.”
Alenzi added: “It is remarkable that the Arab Gulf states occupied the world’s first ten positions in the list. This can be attributed to the positive economic situation which these countries are witnessing and the increasing number of consumers with high purchasing power, besides the growing presence of foreign workers who constantly communicate with their employers and countries of origin.”
The specialized report also revealed that the number of mobile phone users is escalating among teenagers and 9-year-old children, and that this trend is chiefly driven by the widespread use of the Internet in the Saudi community. The study explained that the Internet is the main source for hundreds of thousands of the most frequently downloaded applications and programs on smart devices which enable users to browse the web content including social networking sites, business applications, data processors, chat programs, protection tools, games and much more.
Alenzi highlighted the economic aftermaths of the high rates of mobile phone use in the area which, in turn, led to introducing new companies specialized in developing electronic work environments while inspiring old firms, with sound recording and TV production businesses being on the top, to revolutionize their existing electronic platforms to keep pace with the latest mobile phones.
According to Alenzi, the demand for smart phone applications whose market share amounts to almost $12 billion is expected to rise within the few coming years in light of the widespread of low-cost 3G and 4G smart phone devices and the availability of country-wide telecommunication networks offering high connectivity and download speeds for smart devices.

The number of mobile subscriptions in the Middle East (see note) will cross the 250-million mark during 2012, reaching 271.27 million at end-2012 and rising to 352 million at end-2016, according to forecasts by Informa Telecoms & Media.

Additionally, the average mobile penetration rate for the Middle East will cross the 100% mark in 2012: It will rise from 97.72% at end-2011 to 107.09% at end-2012, exceeding the mobile penetration rate in North America (US/Canada) for the first time. (The mobile penetration rate in North America at end-2012 will be 102.77%.)
Iran will continue to be the biggest mobile market in the Middle East by subscriptions with   82.91 million subscriptions forecast for end-2011, rising to 122.13 million at end-2016.

Saudi Arabia has the next biggest mobile market in the region by subscriptions, with a 50.8 million active mobile subscriptions forecast for end-2011, rising to 71.32 million at end-2016.

Despite the take-up of smartphones and, to a lesser degree, mobile broadband in some parts of the Middle East, data services only account for a relatively small proportion of mobile revenues in the region overall. Data accounted for 13% of mobile revenues in the Middle East in 2Q11; the lowest percentage for any major world region other than Africa.

But this low figure also points to the growth potential for data in the region. Iraq and Iran, both of which are substantial markets, have yet to introduce 3G networks, for example.
In the UAE, smartphone penetration is already high and will continue to rise further: The smartphone penetration rate in the UAE is forecast to be 47.23% at end-2011 and to rise to 70.35% at end-2016, according to Informa.

In Saudi Arabia, the smartphone penetration rate is forecast to rise from 25.01% at end-2011 to 48.63% at end-2016.
But the rates of smartphone penetration will be lower in some other markets in the region. In Jordan, for example, the smartphone penetration rate is forecast to be 2.2% at end-2011, rising to 17.98% at end-2016.
While some countries in the region do not yet have 3G services, all three of Saudi Arabia’s mobile operators have unveiled LTE services. Etisalat is also poised to launch LTE in the UAE.
However, it will take some time for LTE to gain momentum. LTE subscriptions in the Middle East will number only 1.94 million at end-2013 but will reach 15 million at end-2016, according to forecasts by Informa.
Fixed-broadband subscriptions are also set to grow strongly in the region: The number of fixed-broadband subscriptions in the Middle East will rise from 6.51 million at end-2011 to 11.6 million at end-2016.
The report categorize Middle East as: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, UAE and Yemen.

More info about the research can be found here.

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.

#Press Release.

Two-thirds of consumers in the Middle East use the internet to research products and services, according to new research published by Econsultancy and Real Opinions.
The Middle East and North Africa Digital Consumer Report shows that 66% of consumers in MENA are using the internet to look for products or items to buy prior to purchase. Of these respondents, 48% use the internet occasionally and 18% use the web regularly to research products.
The report, which is based on a survey of more than 2,000 consumers across different regions in the Middle East, also shows that a third of consumers are currently purchasing products online, and this includes 27% who purchase occasionally and 6% who regularly buy online.
Online consumers are paying for a wide variety of products. Flights are widely bought on the internet in the Middle East, but other things paid for online include hotel reservations, utility bills and books.

Some 39% of respondents currently do not buy online but report they intend to, indicating that consumer interest in e-commerce is set to grow in the region. Some of the barriers to buying online include a lack of trust in payment systems, unsuitable payment options and the lack of online retailers.
Econsultancy’s Research Manager, Aliya Zaidi said: “The good news is that consumers want to purchase online and interest in e-commerce is rapidly growing, spelling out a clear opportunity for companies investing in digital channels. As more companies launch transactional online sites, consumers will become increasingly familiar with internet shopping.”

Zaidi continued: “Consumers also cited poor website design, unreliable delivery and inability to process customer orders, so a focus on best practice can help to remove some of the barriers to buying online.”

The report also examines in detail how consumers use a wide range of online channels, including mobile, social media, search and email.  Consumers are using the internet on their mobiles with 77% of respondents carrying out social networking, and 70% using email on their smartphone. Other activities carried out using smartphones include instant messaging, watching video clips and playing games.
Real Opinions’ CEO, Dan Healy, said, “Investigating the results by country reveals how diversified Internet usage is across the Middle East. An interesting difference is where respondents access the internet, with 34% accessing via internet cafés in Yemen while only 8% use them in Bahrain as 18% use free public Wi-Fi networks.  There clearly is a challenge for some countries to catch-up with others in the region. ”

Key survey findings:
• The lack of trust in payment is cited as a barrier to buying online by 43% of respondents. The second most cited issue is unsuitable payment options, mentioned by over a third (36%) of respondents.
• Social networking is the most popular online activity across the Middle East with 88% of consumers reporting they use the internet for this daily.
• Facebook is overwhelmingly the most popular social media site in the Middle East, with some 98% of respondents stating they use the site.

About this report
The Middle East and North Africa Digital Consumer Report is based on a survey (commissioned by Econsultancy and conducted by Real Opinions) of more than 2,000 consumers across North Africa, the Levant and the GCC. Respondents came from the Real Opinions online panel across the Middle East from a pool of over 100,000 internet users.
The 55-page report looks at internet usage in the MENA region, including the types of products and services purchased by consumers online. The report also examines in detail how consumers use a wide range of online channels, including mobile, social media, search and email.
The survey results are broken down for North Africa, the Levant and the Gulf states. Certain questions are split out further for Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The results show that cultural, demographic and population differences between countries can have far-reaching consequences for marketers in this region.
Report URL
http://econsultancy.com/reports/middle-east-digital-consumer-report

Saudi Arabia Communications and Information Technology Commission, a government body that overseas the sector, has issued its report for the first half of 2011.

The report (Arabic link) says that there are 12.5 million Internet users in Saudi Arabia representing 44% of the population a growth from 5% in 2001. Saudi Arabia’s population is 27 million. While Mobile subscribers has reached 54.8 million, with prepaid accounts represented the majority of subscribers as 87%, meaning that Mobile penetration rate is 195%. As for fixed telephone lines at the end of the first half of 2011 the number reached 4.49 million lines with penetration rate at 16%.

As for broadband internet which includes DSL and WiMax the number is 1 million subscriber. while broadband number for other wireless connection methods the number was 11 million. the report does not identify the “other wireless methods”

E-commerce confidence among UAE shoppers is on the rise, according to new research commissioned by Arab group buying site GoNabit, a LivingSocial company. The company partnered with independent research consultancy YouGov Siraj to measure e-commerce sentiment among its registered users in the UAE. The research also shows users prefer to shop with credit cards.

This study comes after a one in March this year, the company now plans to release itquarterly.

“Historically, UAE shoppers have bought confidently from overseas websites, but have not had compelling reasons or opportunities to buy from local or regional websites due to a lack of choice, quality and trust. Our latest research reveals a significant attitudinal shift. The majority of people not only feel confident shopping from local websites, but they are actually buying twice as much online from home-grown sites as they are internationally,” said Dan Stuart, CEO and Co-founder, GoNabit.com.

The research reveals that 75% of respondents feel confident buying online from local websites, an increase of 18% since the March 2011 pilot study. Respondents are more than twice as likely to buy from the region where they are resident (60% buy once a month or more) than from other areas of the world (25% buy once a month or more).

In addition to revealing a significant rise in local e-commerce confidence, the research also shows a 16% increase in credit and debit card usage since the March study, with 69% of those polled now indicating that they prefer this option. Card providers of choice are Visa with 52% of shoppers using this brand and Mastercard at 38%. GoNabit and Visa currently partner on “Visa Days,” which provide special discounts and rewards to GoNabit members who pay with their Visa card. Third-party payment sites, such as PayPal, are less popular with 17% of respondents electing to use this payment method.

“A well documented distrust of credit cards among shoppers in the Middle East is clearly waning – with GoNabit built on the requirement that purchasers on our website transacts via credit card. This isn’t about small numbers either; the research shows that shoppers are prepared to spend up to $1,000 or more online in a single transaction. Consumers are confident shopping with us and making large purchases and they’re confident using their credit card to do it,” said Sohrab Jahanbani, COO and Co-founder, GoNabit.com.

Local commerce continues to serve as a great entry point into e-commerce for consumers new to online transactions. In the last six months, 38% of users polled have made their first online purchase. Given that the research sample is made up of registered GoNabit users, there is a strong likelihood that a GoNabit deal has introduced these people to online shopping.

Overall, consumers are optimistic about shopping online in the future – 45% claim that they will branch out and buy different kinds of products online and 34% predict they will spend more money on future purchases. Almost 40% of respondents said they plan to purchase more from websites based in the Middle East region and 41% said they would try shopping from a wider range of websites.

GoNabit says that this optimism and increased confidence in shopping online is a positive sign for merchants, as is the purchasing power of those polled: 44% have a monthly income of $5,000 or more.

The survey was conducted by independent research firm YouGovSiraj between 24th and 31st July 2011, using the GoNabit UAE customer database. Total sample size was 2,470 respondents, 50% male 50% female 65% under 35, Asian 52%, Arab 18% and Westerners 24%.

#image credit.

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.

A new survey by the Arab Advisor Group reveals that 41.6% of mobile handsets in Jordan are Smart phones with Symbian leading with 62% share of smartphones operating systems. iOS and Blackberry share the second place while Android came in third. Smartphone users also prefer the English language for their applications.

The survey revealed that in Jordan 95.8% and 87.5% of iPhone and Blackberry users, respectively, reported using applications through their smartphones, while 57% of Symbian smartphone users use applications. 91.4% of those who use applications prefer the applications in the English language, where only 8.2% of the respondents prefer the Arabic language.

The Arab Advisors Group said it will conduct two other similar surveys in the UAE and Saudi Arabia in the coming 3-4 months.

If you are a developer then you should seriously think about learning one of the mobile programing languages and start developing apps for iOS, android, BB, Symbion phones. As there is a huge opportunity to make money and succeed not only in the international markets but also in the Arabian market specially with Arabic apps as a new study reveals.

If you want to develop mobile apps for the Arab world, you should start with a platform, but the questions is which one you should choose? based on the matrix you decide and a look at the research at the end of the post will help you make a better business decision. However, you should note a major highlight, Nokia is sinking desptie Nokia is a clear leader now, but faces fierce competition in GCC from Apple and BlackBerry. 54% of those in the study who where surveyed, claim to use Nokia smart phone, 45% consider it their main phone for apps and just 22% would consider it as their next smart phone.

The study is done by AppsArabia the UAE based fund for mobile apps entrepreneurs which is part of twofour54, to highlight the business potential of apps in the Arab world. The study was conducted online and surveyed nearly 3,000 people in the region and the highest response rate came from Egypt, which had 14% of the participants.

Here is the research highlights :

• 49% of smartphone users expect to upgrade in the next 6 months, 70% in the next 12 months.
• 82% who don’t have a smartphone want one and 54% expect to get their first one in the next 12 months.
• 95% of smartphone users have apps installed.
• Smartphone users have an average of 29 apps installed, while 40% have 10 or less.
• 51% of smartphone users use apps all day long.
• 73% like downloading apps that make their life easier and 57% are interested in game apps.
• 82% of smartphone users with apps download at least once a week.
• On average, smartphone users download 6 apps each month.
• n the coming 12 months, 53% of all smartphone users claim they will be buying apps (30% said they wouldn’t and 17% were not sure)
• In the coming 12 months, 24% of all smartphone users claim they will spend more than USD$50 on apps.
• 58% would trade their usage data and receive targeted advertising in return for free app
• 52% recommend apps to friends while half as many (26%) give a simple rating score for those
• they don’t know to see.
• 33% find out about new apps from their friends while most are discovered doing a search on their smartphone (38%).
• Just 14% would evaluate an app based upon general media coverage.
• 62% of all smartphone users surveyed in the Middle East prefer apps to be in English while
• 39% of users who understand Arabic prefer apps to be in English.

Here is the full research:

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.

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:

Between 2009 and 2010 Twitter users from the Arab world were estimated to be around 15,000 to 40,000 but these figures were not official and not very accurate. But after the revolution on Tunisia and Egypt, as Twitter has been used as a tool to fuel the revolution,Twitter become a house hold name in the Arab world just like Facebook. An infographic about Digital Marketing Trends in the Middle East from socialbakers and IQPC estimated the number of Twitter users in the Arab region to be around 5.5 Million users, that is 136.5 % growth rate! The infographic goes to reveal that 40% of them are from UAE.
Other interesting figures from the report is that there is 15 million Facebook users, that number however might not be accurate as in Q1 2010 our sources inside Facebook estimated the number around 16-18 million users.
The complete inforgraghic is below, we have another two reservations, e-marketing budgets from the Arab world does not include banners ads spending as it focus on email marketing, smart phone apps, SMS marketing, social media marketing and google adwords. Another one it does not mention the source of the numbers for Twitter users!
Ari Kesisoglu – Regional Manager, Middle East North Africa said that online ad spending in the MENA region is between 110 to 130 Million, thus the report should include banner ad spending to offer a complete picture. USD annually.

Here us the infographics:

A new Arab Advisors Group’s survey of Jordan’s Internet users revealed that over 15% of Internet users in the country are also e-commerce users.

The Arab Advisors Group estimates the number of Jordan Internet users who use e-commerce to be more than 181,000 which is around 3.0% of the total population in Jordan. These e-commerce users have spent an estimated US$ 192 million in e-commerce transactions (buying products, paying for services and paying bills online) in the past 12 months.

We asked Danya Nusseir, senior research analysis at Arab Advisors about these number and she gave us the following: paying for services is around 75 million USD ( they do not have list of services that users buy), pay bills online around 42 million USD, buying products online around 75 million USD.

The survey also revealed that out of the respondents who have an ADSL connection at home, 13.5% share it with their neighbors. Moreover, the survey revealed that WiMAX operators had a 14.3% share of residential broadband Internet accounts in the country, up from 9.6% in October 2008. The survey also revealed that respondents who have a WiMAX connection at home choose higher Internet speeds than those who have an ADSL connection at home.

The Arab Advisors says that survey results answers were from 1,021 respondent which were used as a basis for the survey.

#image credit.

Inside Facebook released few days ago its Inside Facebook Gold report, with data about membership and usage across the number 1 social networking site in the world Facebook.

The report reveals the shift of Facebook population of more than 500 million users, from being dominated by US citizens and English speaking people to more of an international play ground.

According to the report Arabic had the highest growth rate in August with around 18%  followed Portuguese by around 11%, this is due to the increasing number of Brazilian coverts from Google’s social network Orkut to Facebook, as Facebook is showing strong growth in Brazil.

As for Arabic, despite that its high growth rate it is still the smallest of the top 10 languages, holding around 1%. Our source inside Facebook informed us few months ago that Facebook users from the Arab world stands at around 16-18 million users ( we will update you soon with the latest numbers.)

English has dipped from holding 50% of languages on Facebook to 47.95%. The second language was spanish with 14.43%, then French with 5.26%, Turkish makes the 4th largest language on Facebook with 4.66%, while the largest Muslim country in terms of population Indonesia holds the 5th rank with 4.44%.

That also means that  3 languages moslty spoken by Muslims ( Turkish, Indonesian and Arabic) make around 11% of facebook users holding the 3rd place ahead of French, which implies that facebook has to be more concerned about Muslims feelings with provocative stuff such as (draw Mohammad -peace be upon him- day on facebook) as someone like Millatfacebook might eat the lunch.

This shift in Facebook population, also means that facebook is eating users from Google and Yahoo at the international level, which is a good news for Facebook and International social marketers alike, as ads on Facebook now can be targets to specific languages not just English.

#via insidefacebook.

Internet security company AVG just released a study that looks at the safest and most dangerous places to be hit hit by a malicious computer attack or virus.

According to the study the most dangerous countries for web surfers is Turkey with an average of 1 in every 10 users face a threat to be hit online, followed by Russia 1 in every 15 users, Armenia (1 in 24) and Azerbaijan (1 in 39). While some of the world’s safest surfers can be found in Japan and Taiwan and seven of the 10 safest countries in which to surf the Internet are in Africa.

AVG said in a press release that data was taken from 144 countries, involving over 100 million PCs ( i think mostly Windows based), enabled AVG to look at the incidence of security threats that its software had to deal with in the last week of July. From these figures, AVG came out with an average for attacks per user per country.

USA is at number nine when it comes to the riskiest places to go online where 1 in 48 people were hit by an attack , UK is ranked 31st (1 in 63), Australia 37th (attack ratio = 1 in 75) while German web surfers come in at number 41 (1 in 83).

Sierra Leone had the fewest attacks with on average one in 692 web surfers facing an attack, Niger is second and Japan third with one in 404 facing an attack, is arguably the safest place to surf the net.

As per continent the safest continent is Africa (1 in 108), and by a long way South America (1 in 164), North America scored 1 in 51. In Europe 1 in 72, while in Asia (including Asia Pacific) 1 in 102.

VG spokesperson, Roger Thomson attributed the risks to a number of reasons,” the tendency to access semi-legal or illegal download sites, while some of it probably is down to being less cautious when it comes to sharing links and files online. Another factor is the popularity of Internet cafes and people generally sharing computers. However, it is safe to say that even in these countries, a minority of users account for a large proportion of attacks.”

Thomson cities that the low attacks rates in Japan to the country’s broad-band high penetration rates and that Japanese web surfers are generally more aware of safe and risky surfing behaviors.

As  for Arab countries, the numbers are: Iraq 1 in 49.6, Oman 1 in 54.9, Iran 1 in 55.4, Qatar 1 in 56.3, Yemen  1 in 64.9, Kuwait 1 in 74.6, UAE 1 in 80.5, Jordan 1 in 98.0, Saudi Arabia 1 in 110.5, Syria 1 in 181.4. The Global average is 1 in 73.

The study can be found here.

ComScore the leading company for measuring web stats released today its July 2010 qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace.

Americans conducted more than 16.6 billion total core search queries in July with Google Sites leading with 10.3 billion searches growing 1% from June 2010, followed by Yahoo! Sites growing at 8% with 3.4 billion and Microsoft Sites with 2.1 billion growing at 1% from June.

ComScorer base Total Core Search on the five major search engines, including partner searches, cross-channel searches and 
contextual searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and 
user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of 
the five search engines are not included in these numbers.

As for Explicit Core Search, ComScore defines it as user engagement with a search service with the intent to retrieve search results. The stats as follows:

Out of Nearly 15.6 billion explicit core searches were conducted in July, Google Sites led the U.S. explicit core search market in July with 65.8 percent market share at 10.3 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 17.1 percent at 2.7 billion searches up 0.4 percentage points and Microsoft sites with 11.0 percent growth a 1.7 billion searches . Ask network captured 3.8 percent of explicit core searches at 588 million searches (up 1 percent), followed by AOL LLC with 2.3 percent at 365 million searches.

#image via Stéfan.

Opera the oldest independent Mobile browser company today published it’s State of the Mobile Web Report World Cup Edition, a report that offers deeper inside into major mobile web browsing trends, this time the report focus is worldcup and Africa. In Africa Mobile phonepenetration is higher than PC penetration.

In june 2010 Opera Mini had over 59.4 million users, a 3.2% decrease from May 2010 but an increase of 124.7% since June 2009. Opera backs the slight decrease in key metrics “can be traced to certain countries where we have experienced some technical and political challenges that now are about to be solved.”

As for how many pagesviews Opera Mini users viewed the number was over 27.3 billion pages in June 2010. Since May, page views have gone down 3.4%. Since June 2009, page views have increased 161.8%.

According to the report Africa is seeing an explosive mobile browsing growth, where Sudan and Ghana lead the top 12 countries of the region in terms of page-view growth (4,645.6% and 916.5%, respectively). Sudan and Ghana also lead the top 12 countries of the region in growth of unique users (1,225.0% and 498.8%, respectively). Kenya leads the top 12 countries of the region in page views per user, with each user browsing 639 pages on average each month

The top 12 countries using Opera Mini in that region are South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana, Sudan, Libya, Tanzania, Ivory Coast, Namibia, Mozambique and Mauritius. from June 2009 to June 2010, page views in the top 12 countries in Africa increased by 182%, unique users increased by 124%, and the amount of data transferred increased by 160%.

Other findings of the report:

- Facebook, Google and YouTube all do well in Africa. Facebook is the top-ranked site in six of the twelve listed countries, and Google is ranked #1 in the remaining six countries.

- Nokia remains the most popular handset brand in Africa, followed by Sony Ericsson, Samsung, and LG.

- iPhone is the leading handset for Opera Mobile users in USA fowled by BlackBerry 8330 (“Curve”) and then BlackBerry 9700 (“Bold”), Samsung SPH M810 (“Instinct s30”), Nokia 5130 XpressMusic ranks 9.

- Most Popular sites in USA: google, Facebook, youtube, wikipedia, yahoo, my.opera.com, accuweather.com, nytime, Twitter then Myspace.

- Russia:Nokia is the top handset first Nokia 6300 followed by Nokia 5130 XpressMusic, Nokia 5310 XpressMusic, Nokia N73, Nokia 2700c. Topsites are vkontakte.ru then yandex.ru, google comes 5th.

-China: all tops 10 handsets are Nokia starting with Nokia 5130, top sites are : kaiqi.com then baidu.com, google comes third.

-Egypt: saw Unique-user growth since June 2009: 158.5%, all top 10 handsets are Nokia, top sites are google.com, Facebook, youtube, getjar, ketomob, yahoo, yallakora 7th.

- Sudan: saw Unique-user growth since June 2009: 1,225.0%, top 10 handsets all Nokia, tops sites: google, Facebook, youtube, ketomob, gear, live.com, bbc.co.uk. my.opera.com, yahoo.com and wikipedia 10th.

- Libya’s 10 top handsets are all Nokia top 3 sites: google.com, youtune and then Facebook.

- The top sports sites visited by Opera Minin users in June 2010: goal.com then, livescore, fifa.com, m.championat.ru, m.espn.go.com

Opera also held its first Opera Mini Mobile Web World Cup. Opera used per capita mobile browsing figures to determine the match winners. The results were quite different from the real games, with Chile and Argentina advancing to the final match. Chile squeezed by Argentina by just 4.1 pages-per-user on that day to win.

More stats on the report’s page here.

Today Yahoo! Maktoob Research, in collaboration with InterMedia Survey Institute in Washington DC, announces the results of its latest poll among 937 respondents from Egypt, Jordan, Morocco and Saudi Arabia.

The poll explores the Arab World’s views on the outcomes of the recent Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship, which took place at the end April 2010. AC covered the Summit live and I view it ” disappointing.”

According to a press release from Yahoo!, the Yahoo! Maktoob Research poll shows that Arabs are “quite informed” when it comes to US activities involving the Muslim world, as almost six out of ten respondents (62%) were aware of U.S. President Obama’s speech to Muslim entrepreneurs, out of which there were significantly more men and Egyptians.

The research reveal that there are very little trust about US intentions towards the Muslims world:

-Less than three out of ten respondents (26%) believe that the United States is either very or somewhat committed to improving economic conditions in the Muslim World. Out of the countries surveyed, believability seems to be the lowest among Jordanians.

-The same percentage is being achieved when asked how optimistic Arabs are that the United States will be able to help improve economic conditions in the Muslim World. Just over a quarter (26%) are very or somewhat optimistic. Men, North African and Levant Nationals are the least optimistic.

-The largest percentage of respondents (82%) states that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the most important issue for the United States to address to prove its commitment to improving relations with individual citizens in the Muslim World.

-The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is followed by democracy and justice in the Muslim World (40%) and the war in Iraq (37%). The other issues are being ranked as follows: human rights (29%), nuclear proliferation (27%), economic development/jobs (24%), religious freedom (24%) and women’s rights (3%). On average three main issues are being mentioned by the respondents.

-A larger number of women seem to be concerned about the war in Iraq (45% versus 35%) and religious freedom (34% versus 20%) compared to their male counterparts.

At ArabCrunch we do not know how accurate Maktoob Yahoo research is and if it truly represent the main stream  opinion in the Arab world..

What is your views?

#Image by AJC1.

What represents new threats and opportunity to mobile operators, a new study from Juniper Research has found that Mobile VoIP services will develop significantly faster in developed markets due to the direct correlation between 3G roll outs and the take up of mobile VoIP. This is the case even though mVoIP traffic volumes may eventually be higher in developing markets due in part to the calling patterns of migrant workers, according to the study Mobile Voice Strategies: mVoIP Opportunities & Business Models, 2010-2015.

“By 2012 we expect significant uptake of mobile VoIP in its various different flavours”, says Anthony Cox, Senior Analyst at Juniper Research. “By that date mobile VoIP will be available over both 3G and WiFi networks. We also anticipate that several more traditional operators will have joined 3UK and Verizon in the US and developed relationships with mobile VoIP players such as Skype,” he says.

Further findings include:

· Alliances between mobile VoIP players and traditional operators may provide the best option for today’s incumbent operators to address the advent of mobile VoIP.

· Revenues from the circuit switched voice market will continue to diminish over the next five years, although this will not accelerate.

· A high percentage of Mobile VoIP carried over applications will be via WiFi networks, bypassing operators’ networks altogether. Such traffic will result in some lost revenues, amounting to around $5bn by 2015.

More info in the mobile voice report.

According to Opera’s State of the Mobile Web report, In Southeast Asia among mobile-Web users, Google is at the top of the rankings for numerous countries, with the very significant exception of Indonesia where Google is only at #6 and Yahoo! is at #2. The vast majority of Opera Mini users in Southeast Asia are in Indonesia.

On the other hand, Facebook is now the most-visited social network on the mobile. Unique users of Facebook grew more than 600% during 2009, helping the site surpass VKontakte, formerly the most popular social network among Opera Mini users. Twitter saw its usage increase more than any other social network, surging more than 2800% in just one year.

Opera’s State of the Mobile Web Report, published monthly, provides information on the top global trends affecting the mobile Web. The full report is available from http://www.opera.com/smw/. In addition to the top global trends and country snapshots, this month, the report highlights Southeast Asia and examines social networking on the mobile Web.

Global Trends

- In December 2009, more than 46.3 million people used Opera Mini, an 11% increase from November 2009 and more than 159% compared to December 2008.

- Those 46.3 million people viewed more than 20.7 billion pages in December 2009. Since November, page views have gone up 10.1%. Since December 2008, page views have increased 223%.

- Opera Mini users generated over 315 million megabytes (MB) of data for operators worldwide in December 2009. Since November, the data consumed went up by 10.5%. Data in Opera Mini is compressed up to 90%. If this data were uncompressed, Opera Mini users would have viewed over 2.9 petabytes (PB) of data in December. Since December 2008, data traffic is up 206%.

- The top 10 countries ranked by number of Opera Mini users are (in order): Russia, Indonesia, India, Ukraine, China, South Africa, United States, Vietnam, Nigeria, and United Kingdom. This month Ukraine overtook China, Vietnam continues its ascent (at the expense of the United Kingdom) and Nigeria is back on the list after a 3-month absence, pushing Poland out of the top 10 for the first time.

Social networking on the mobile Web

- Facebook is the top social-networking site, worldwide. Given the popularity of Opera in Russian-speaking countries, VKontakte used to be in the top position (based on unique users), but it was overtaken by Facebook in 2009.

- Twitter was the other big winner in terms of growth in 2009, with the number of unique unique users jumping more than 2800%.

- All of the listed social-networking sites, except for Friendster, showed significant user growth (via Opera Mini) in 2009.

Southeast Asia trends

- The top 10 countries using Opera Mini in Southeast Asia are: Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Brunei, Singapore, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

- From December 2008 to December 2009, page views in the top 10 countries of Southeast Asia increased by 599%, unique users increased by 385%, and data transferred increased by 587%.

- Vietnam and Indonesia lead the top 10 Southeast Asian countries in terms of page-view growth (1,316.4% and 641.9%, respectively). Vietnam and Indonesia also lead the top 10 Southeast Asian countries in growth of unique users (846.9% and 419.7%, respectively). Brunei leads the top 10 Southeast Asian countries in page views per user, with each user browsing 987 pages on average each month.

- Facebook is now the dominant social-networking site in Southeast Asia among mobile-Web users.

- By far, Opera Mini users in Southeast Asia prefer Nokia handsets.

After many days of hard work, after over a year of full time dedication to help startups and techies like you, today AC reached a major milestone: ArabCrunch.NET First Online Social Platform in the Arab World focused on Startups & The Technology Industry. With this announcement, the social platform, was what you the passionate startup and tech community wanted AC to develop for you  and as I mentioned back on April that AC will do it! when I wrote about the ecosystem that we need to have in order to help grow the tech industry in this region and turn our economies into knowledge based economy. Today Our promise is delivered, Here is the ecosystem in one place

ArabCrunch.NET, Helping The Arab World Innovate

ArabCrunch Group Extends Technological Reach with First Social Network in the Arab World focused on the technology industry

Amman, Jordan and Silicon Valley, CA – Tuesday, November 10, 2009 – ArabCrunch Group announced today closing a round of funding and the launch of ArabCrunch.NET, the first social network dedicated to creating an environment that fosters innovation, entrepreneurship and mentorship for Arab entrepreneurs throughout the world. ArabCrunch.NET offers a dynamic platform for collaboration amongst the various stakeholders within the technological ecosystem from Berkeley to Bahrain.

The launch came during a press conference held by Arab Crunch in cooperation with Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship at the headquarters of the Royal Scientific Society.

“ArabCrunch.NET will facilitate knowledge transfer and enable veterans from Silicon Valley to work with and mentor young talent from the MENA region,” said Bassel Yassine Ojjeh, a former Senior Vice President of Yahoo!, Inc. USA, a serial entrepreneur and Board Member of ArabCrunch Group, who led the round of funding. “We’ve built ArabCrunch.NET to fuel innovation, create a knowledge based society and an environment for job creation in the region that will serve high tech professionals throughout the 22 Arab countries and the western hemisphere.”

“We’re thrilled at the opportunity to be the first dedicated group that focuses on accelerating the innovation cycle both here in Amman and throughout the Arab world,” said Gaith Saqer, Founder of ArabCrunch Group. “Ever since we launched ArabCrunch.com in 2008, we have been committed to finding the most compelling technological innovations that impact the Arab world – this next chapter allows us to help foster collaboration on a scale never seen before in our region. We have built a social platform that connects participants and helps them find crucial resources, build strategic partnerships and promote services.”

Since it’s unveiling in 2008, ArabCrunch.com has grown to one of the most widely read technology blogs in the Arab world with over 30,000 monthly visits. Founded on the principle of “professional blogging,” ArabCrunch.com has become the primary source of information about the latest technological advancements relevant to the Arabic world. An Arabic version based on “citizen journalism” was launched last month and has met with great success.

- END-

About ArabCrunch Group:
ArabCrunch Group’s mission is to inform, impact, inspire and create an Arab centric technology ecosystem that delivers information, and connects Arab entrepreneurs both in the region and throughout the world via its properties, ArabCrunch.com, ArabCrunch.NET and ArabCrunch.com/ar. About

Arab Crunch.NET:

The mission of ArabCrunch.NET is to help accelerate entrepreneurship and technology innovation in the Arab world by delivering an online social platform that connects participants of the technology ecosystem.
ArabCrunch.NET is the first online social platform dedicated to connect and support technology companies, entrepreneurs, techies, scientists, academia and investors in the Arab world. ArabCrunch.NET is a project from ArabCrunch, the publisher of arabcrunch.com and ArabCrunch Arabic Edition.

About Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship:
The QRCE is a non-profit, non-governmental organization established in October 2004 and is now a complement of El Hassan Science City. The center’s mission is to support economic development through offering a package of services to promote excellence and market technology. The centre particularly targets college students, researchers, inventors and initiators to enhance and build their personal capacities. QRCE offers this group consultation and works to develop their sense of excellence and initiative through a set of programs including Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Excellence Competition, Technology Commercialization Program, Connect Jordan and Princess Sumaya University for Technology’s Entrepreneurship Society (DART).

HH Sheikh Ahmed bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Chairman of the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation has launched The Arab Knowledge Report 2009: Towards Productive Intercommunication for Knowledge during the Arab Strategy Forum. The report is the fruit of a collaborative effort between the Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation and the United Nations Development Programme/ Regional Bureau for Arab States.

It is the first of a projected series of reports that address the state of knowledge in the Arab Region. The ultimate aim is to analyse and identify opportunities and risks inherent in the acquisition, production, creation, and deployment of knowledge; a primary avenue for renaissance and human development.

Emphasising the triadic relationship among development, freedom, and knowledge, the Report views the upgrading of Arab knowledge performance as a gateway to reform the Arab development situation. In addition to calling for optimal deployment of the Arab knowledge repertoire, the report also stresses the importance of productive intercommunication with the accumulated global knowledge. Out of a belief in the right to knowledge and a conviction that its dissemination is a societal responsibility, the Report puts forward a general vision of future strategies and initiatives, including suggested mechanisms and foundations for action aimed at bridging the knowledge gap in the Arab region.

I skimmed quickly thorough the report which looked very rich with about 300 pages. It is inline with our motto at ArabCrunch “Towards a Technology Revolution in the Arab world.” As AC’s main mission from day one is to help Arab startups, which is a key pillar for a knowledge based economy in the Arab world, we also wrote before about this topic at the Macro level.

On a later posts I will discuss some of the points and findings highlighted by the report.

As for the topics of the Report. they are:

• The Theoretical Framework: concepts and problematics of the knowledge society (Chapter 1)Arab Knowledge Performance Environments: expanding freedoms and building institutions (Chapter 2)
• Education and the formation of knowledge capital (Chapter 3)
• Information and Communications Technologies in the Arab Countries: the pillars and tools of knowledge (Chapter 4)
• Arab research and innovation performance (Chapter 5)
• Building the Knowledge Society in the Arab Nation: a vision and a plan (Chapter 6)

To view and download the Arab Knowledge Report 2009, click here

Jeeran one of the popular social media communities in the Arab world has  recently launched a new subsidiary called Jeeran Research a research agency tailored to the Arab world (they call it MENA !) that competes directly with Yahoo’s Matoob Research.

The new company is using a new reward based Arabic/English survey community called Nazrati –(Arabic meaning: my point of view) to collect consumer data and analyze research for participating companies.

Nazrati is using opt-in methods for users to participate in online surveys, polls and community discussions. In return Jeeran Research will offer its members rewards. Currently it is offering giveaways that value rang from 1000$, 500, 400 down to 100$. According to Nazarti’s website the reward scheme will be based on  monthly and quarterly prize draws.
Like Yahoo’s Maktoob Research, Jeeran Research will be used primary by companies operating in the Arab world, to gauge users’ opinion and feedback which would help companies fine tune their product and marketing strategies.

(Next post the Story of Jeeran.)

Opera Mini is one of the world’s most popular Mobile Web browsers with over 20 million users. It comes with many distinguished features such as: It brings you the full web experience with full web view instead of the standard mobile view on your handset. And it is about two to three times faster than any other mobile browser because Opera software process and compress each webpage request from Opera Mini on its servers.

Stats experts at Opera were kind to send us some stats of how Opera is doing in the Arab world upon our request: Egypt has the highest users base then Saudi Arabia (KSA) and Libya. As for the mostly popular sites, Google was ranked first on the top 3 countries, facebook ranked second in Egypt and Libya, while Yahoo! ranked third in Egypt, second in KSA and 4th in Libya. Three Arabic sites were also on the top 10 sites and they are all sports related: filgoal.com owned by Sarmady a subsidiary of Vodafone. Yallakora.com owned by LINKonLINE a subsidiary of Orascom Telecom Holding Company and kooora.com.

Here is the full stats data we got:

Top 10 countries using Opera Mini ranked by unique users:
1. Egypt
2. Saudi Arabia
3. Libya
4. Syria
5. United Arab Emirates
6. Jordan
7. Oman
8. Kuwait
9. Sudan
10. Yemen

Top 10 sites for top 3 countries:

Egypt:

1. google.com
2. facebook.com
3. yahoo.com
4. my.opera.com
5. youtube.com
6. filgoal.com
7. getjar.com
8. yallakora.com
9. bbc.co.uk
10. wikipedia.org

Saudi Arabia:

1. google.com
2. yahoo.com
3. youtube.com
4. friendster.com
5. my.opera.com
6. en.wikipedia.org
7. facebook.com
8. live.com
9. bbc.co.uk
10. taggeduniverse.com

Libya:

1. google.com
2. facebook.com
3. my.opera.com
4. yahoo.com
5. kooora.com
6. w3.org
7. getjar.com
8. youtube.com
9. waptrick.com
10. news.bbc.co.uk

I have previously live streamed a video interview with Jon S. von Tetzchner, CEO and cofounder of Opera here.