go to AppsArabia home page

September saw the Andoid Market pass half a million published apps according to mobile app market intelligence firm research2guidance, but they pointed out that 37% of apps have been removed for various reasons.

The Apple App Store has had over 600,000 apps published to date with 24% of apps having been removed.

Read more on the BGR web site including the full press release from research2 guidance.

Research commissioned by AppsArabia, conducted by Real Opinions & sponsored by Research In Motion.

Click here for more information.

Here’s an interesting article by Ingrid Lunden @ mocoNews.net which share some interesting forecasts about the global apps market. Click here to read it.

MEF have invited all AppsArabia members to a webinar on 1st June 2011 to hear about how apps, smartphones and context are changing the mobile commerce landscape.

The panel of industry experts will debate strategy, opportunity and consider where the changing landscape is taking us. Analytics will be presented on the webinar providing you with unique insights in terms of what is happening in M-commerce globally.

The Moderator will be Andrew Bud, MEF Global Chair and Founder & Chief Strategy Officer at mBlox.

Panelists will be:

• Irfan Goandal, Associate Director of Group Product Development at Qtel International
• Limvirak Chea, Head of BD Europe & Middle East at InMobi
• Bruno Coindre, COO at TransferTo
• Suhail Bhat, Policy & Initiative Director at MEF

Click here for more information and to register.

This is a fabulous infographic from Chillingo, Chomp and 148Apps. Check out the Facebook page of 500,000 Apps.

David George-Cosh’s article in today’s The National quotes some of our local developers who are holding back their BlackBerry app projects because of uncertainty over BlackBerry’s future within the region.

But is this a blessing in disguise? Would the BlackBerry app projects have been commercially successful? Maybe, but only if the apps were *not* targeting BlackBerry users in MENA.

The article says “About 10,000 BlackBerry apps are available on RIM’s App World, a fraction of the 253,000 apps available for the iPhone device. However, there are 41 million BlackBerry users around the world, providing ample potential for developers to make an app that could generate significant sales.”

But how are you supposed to distribute and sell BlackBerry apps *here* in MENA? BlackBerry App World is not available in any of the MENA countries and the only distribution channels currently available (provided by the likes of the telcos) are actually pretty inefficient. So I think it is quite hard to generate significant sales with BlackBerry apps in our region. There’s no denying there is a sizeable market and a considerable demand for apps here but an effective distribution channel is *essential* for commercial success in MENA.

So come on RIM … give us BlackBerry App World in MENA!

What do you think? Please click on RESPOND to leave your comments.

The print edition of this article included this useful bit of data about the number and spread of new handsets in UAE in Q4 2009:

Click here to read the full article on The National web site.