Sunday, February 14, 2010

Jordan leads in patents but regional innovation and content is low, says Google

Google claims that the state of innovation in the Middle East is ‘in bad shape’ compared to other regions across the world.

In a keynote speech at Google Day Arabia 2.0 in Dubai last week, Mohammad Gawdat, Google's managing director for Southern and Eastern Europe as well as the Middle East and Africa region, said that there was only a total of 3,224 patents filed from the MENA region in the last thirteen years.

Jordan leads the pack with more than 150, followed by Saudi Arabia and then Morocco.

According to 2009 Madar Research, only 56 million internet users in the MENA region search in Arabic though it is home to a population of 337 million. It's also estimated that less than 1 percent of all content online is in Arabic.

Google claims the region only ‘graduated' in 2009, which is a term used internally to signify that it is now possible to start pursuing their mission there. "The internet was not ready when we (Google) came to the Middle East," admitted Gawdat. He said that while the region may have a late start compared to other markets, it has the chance to ‘leapfrog' over them.

The Google Day Arabia 2.0 saw executives and government officials from across the Middle East come together to discuss the future of the Internet and prospects for innovation in the region.

Vinton Cerf, Google's VP and chief internet evangelist spoke at the event and predicted that currently dominant online populations such as the US and Europe will be overtaken by masses gaining connectivity from the Middle East, Africa and Asia in the future.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Nokia introduces "Comes With Music" service in Middle East, along with the new Nokia X6

I had the pleasure of attending Nokia's regional event in Beirut announcing its "Comes With Music" service, that enables buyers of the new Nokia X6 phone to enjoy unlimited music downloads legally for a year, from the Ovi store catalogue.

For around $600, buyers get the touchscreen Nokia X6 capable of storing around 3,000 songs on its 16GB built-in memory, and can then select the music they want from a library of 4 million. The music files will be digital-rights-managed (DRM) and users can keep the music on their X6 phone, and consequent Nokia X-series devices, and can also keep a copy of it all on their PC too.

Nokia rolls out this service in 11 Arab markets: Jordan, Lebanon, Palestinian Territories, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, UAE and Egypt in the first week of March 2010. The service has already been introduced in 14 other markets across Europe, Asia and South America.

Nokia has signed agreements with over 2000 music content owners, including Middle Eastern labels such as Rotana, Mazzika, Melody Music and others; so popular Arabic music is now available for download. This should please music fans across the region.

I had the opportunity to ask Ayman Chalhoub, head of retail sales for music at Nokia, regarding the means by which Nokia X6 owners can renew their unlimited music download service when the first 12 months run out, and the answer was that users can do so by buying a new Nokia device.

Although it seems a bit strange that users may have to buy a new device every year to continue to download music, it appears that it's still early to predict how Nokia's music distribution strategy in the MEA region will evolve, as the company gauges the success of its new approach and receives feedback from customers.

Steve Lewis, head of Nokia marketing for Middle East and Africa, commented on this matter saying that this 'one year free music download' strategy was found to be the most suitable approach for Nokia and its music partners in the Middle East for now, and that there could be more developments in this field. He emphasized the positive aspect of this strategy which was the accessibility it offers to a massive music library.

Echoing this idea was Jake Larsen, Head of Music, Middle East and Africa, who said that "The mobile phone will be the top music device," and went on to explain that Nokia has "forever changed the way that digital music is consumed" and that this will "significantly reduce music piracy".

These are bold statements, but Nokia's initiative is indeed a game-changer in the digital music industry.

As the whole music industry grapples with the transition to digital music distribution, various models from Nokia, Apple and others will be implemented, and it will be up to consumers to vote with their wallets on what approach delivers the most value.

For more information on Nokia "Comes With Music", click here.

zanasser@gmail.com
Photos courtesy of Shuffe|gazine

Sunday, February 07, 2010

Mobile OS wars evolve

Up until a few years ago, it looked like Symbian Series 60 was the key mobile phone operating system, and developers ran to it in droves creating applications. To this day it remains the leader, with studies showing that Symbian accounts for over 50% of the mobile OS market share.

But Apple’s aggressive iPhone strategy, coupled with the successful AppStore and iTunes, is clearly cutting into that lead, as are other players such as BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Google’s Android.

Nokia has responded by improving its offering, launching the Ovi application store and recently ‘opening up’ the Symbian code which it owns to developers, thereby making it an open source technology that can compete with Android which is gathering pace because it’s developers are adopting it.

And, on top of that, Nokia is experimenting with another mobile OS, Maemo on its N97 and N900. Maybe this means Nokia is moving on from Symbian and maybe not.

But it’s strange to see so-called industry analysts sounding the death knell for Symbian, while predicting- as if anyone could predict at this stage- that the future mobile OS war is a straight battle between the iPhone OS and Android.

Frankly, it seems to be a conclusion reached purely due to the ‘coolness’ factor of Apple and Google.

For example, the Android’s user base is smaller than Windows Mobile which Microsoft probably considers to be a somewhat of a failure!

The reality is that Nokia continues to dominate the mobile phone arena, still accounting for more than iPhone, BlackBerry and Android phones put together!
A significant percentage of those phones are Symbian OS smart phones, and when you add the Symbian devices also produced by LG, Samsung, Sony Ericcsson and others it becomes clear that the iPhone is ‘trendy’ but not dominant. Even in it’s category of new-age smart phones, the iPhone still lags behind BlackBerry devices- some studies report a two-to-one sales ratio in it’s home market of North America- and BlackBerry is beating it by even more than that in other regions.

So maybe Symbian, BlackBerry, iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile - in that order- are still all vying to win the battle for an industry standard mobile OS.
But who said consumers want one dominant standard? I know I don’t. It’s refreshing today to see Microsoft Windows, Macinstosh OS and Linux competing to please consumers in the personal computer world.

The mobile world made of smaller, pocket-size computers, should go that route too. Variety is good and now that Symbian and Android are open, we’ll see what Microsoft, Apple and BlackBerry will do next with their ‘closed code’, but highly integrated mobile OS offerings. It should be interesting to watch.

zanasser@gmail.com