%32
%21
%14
%13
%6
%5
%5
%4
Lack of capabilities and
absence of specialized
material
Poor marketing
Absence of innovative ideas
Absence of appropriate setting
Absence
of pro-
fessional
design
Negligence of
updating and
feedback
Limited number of
users
Absence of trust, and
high prices
words, it is like she is among her friends
and family whenever they are [online] re-
gardless of the nationality of the app.
Saif Abdullah sees that there are Arab
apps that are worth making it to the top
charts because, in his opinion, they offer
modern and advanced technology, simu-
late reality and provide services needed
by Arabs throughout the Arab region.
However, Abdullah sees that the affection
for everything “foreign” controls many Ar-
abs who believe that the gap separating
us from the West cannot be bridged in any
way.
At the same time, Abdullah stresses that
the UAE has realized at an early stage
the importance of smart technology. Ac-
cordingly, it proceeded with establishing
training centres in this field to train na-
tional talents and quality them to support
the mobile government initiative with Emi-
rati apps that can reach the international
scene.
Mehra Aref agrees that there is a gap
between Arab and non-Arab apps. She
sees that in order to bridge this gap, pro-
gramming language for such apps can be
taught at Arab universities and specialized
courses can be developed in this regard.
She indicated that even though there are
many Arab apps in the market, some of
them are only amateur efforts and not pro-
fessional enough.
Salem Al Shahi considered that compe-
tition in social networking apps such as
Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp is al-
most impossible. However, he stresses
that Arab developers can compete in ser-
vice-based apps such as prayer times and
Quran and game apps.
Al Shahi continues saying that the limited
penetration of Arab apps is not due to their
low-quality but rather due to dominance
of popular apps and difficulty to compete
with them. Users in general prefer popu-
lar apps with large number of users. For
instance, we can communicate with most
smartphone users on WhatsApp but if an
Arab app is developed, you can hardly
find anyone on the user list.
Ahmed Al Hamadi believes that logistic
limitations prevent many Arab program-
mers from developing Arab apps similar to
Skype, Viber and WhatsApp. They need
tremendous amount of support as they
need large servers to accommodate the
large volume of data. Therefore, Al Hama-
di suggests the importance of setting up
Arab technological incubators to sponsor
these ideas.
Al Hamadi also believes that the absence
of Arab books that talk about the smart
app industry contributes to the creation of
this gap.
Mariam Ubaid agreed with the other us-
ers. She says it is important to start de-
veloping Arab software that can strongly
compete in the smart world. She attributes
the shortage in this area to the poor mar-
keting and lack of independent budgets
for this process; the majority of Arab apps
are only individual and separate efforts
that do not survive long.
However, Ubaid believes there are Arab
talents that can compete strongly in this
sector but only need support and provision
of the proper circumstances that can help
bring out those creative talents. There is
no “impossible” in the knowledge age.
17
November
2014
