Daveeda Shaheen, the entrepreneur behind the Finjan app, was inspired by traditional Arabic pastimes, and developed the concept into a viable and locally relevant app with AppsArabia. Designed specifically for iPhone, the app also includes theme music based on Arabic classic “Karet El Finjan” or “Reader of the Cup” by renowned poet Nizar Qabbani and sung by regional icon Abdel Halim Hafiz paying tribute to the traditions around the Arab world.

The Finjan app is available for purchase on iTunes here: http://bit.ly/GCSTai

Looks like Nokia are back to what they do best – innovating to make great hardware. Check out the videos of their prototype demo of a flexible user interface … yes, really! They’re introducing some neat gestures which might just be the future. What do you think?

Click here to read the article and see the videos on Mashable.

BGR reported that it looks like more Android apps are now being downloaded than iOS apps. This insight came from a press release from ABI Research.

It could well be true but the press release does make the point that “despite leading in total mobile app downloads, Android’s app downloads per user still lag behind Apple’s by 2-to-1″.

And I’m pretty sure that Apple is way ahead in terms of paid downloads too … Apple’s ecosystem is far more profitable (for Apple and for app entrepreneurs) than Android’s.

• now 11% of consumers in US own tablets
• 77% use their tablets daily
• average usage is 90 minutes per day
• 53% use their tablets to read news each day
• 67% use their tablets for general web browsing
• 54% use their tablets for emailing
• 39% use their tablets for social networking
• 30% use their tablets for gaming
• 17% use their tablets for reading e-books
• 13% use their tablets for watching movies and videos

Some really great stats have just been published by Millennial Media’s MobileMix. It’s important to note that this is based on data captured by their ad network, i.e. the number of impressions served by the Millennial Media mobile ad network.

• They serve ads to twice as many Android devices as iOS devices
• They serve twice as many ads to Apple iPhone devices than any other
• The iPad totally dominates the tablet market with 456% year-on-year Q3 growth

Click here to read the full press release and see all the charts on the BGR web site.

Nokia are due to announce the Lumia 800 and Lumia 710 devices, which run Microsoft Windows Phone 7, at today’s Nokia World event in London, UK.

• The Lumia 800 (my favourite) is rumoured to have 8-megapixel camera and 3.7 inch display
• The Lumia 710 is rumoured to have 5-megapixel camera, 3.5 inch display, 1.4 GHz processor and 1GB of RAM

They should both hit the market before the end of the year.

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.

This is a very interesting metric from David Barnard, founder of App Cubby: developers who build and sell apps for Apple’s iOS platform will collectively earn more money over the next year than Google will earn from its entire mobile business.

• Google expect to earn $2.5 billion
• Apple will pay app publishers $2 billion
• Include third party ad revenue from the likes of AdMob and indie app developers will make more than $2.5 billion

Wow!

Find out more in this great article on BGR.

New research from Berg Insight reveals that the number of app downloads is expected to reach 98 billion by 2015. This will lead to app store revenue growing to $11.8 billion.

Read the full article on TechCrunch here.

Today is a very sad day. Steve Jobs has died after a long battle with pancreatic cancer. Geeks and creative people all over the world frankly worship Steve and what he has created at Apple. I think he was a genius – not only was he responsible for products that changed our lives but he also changed the way people do business and run companies.

I believe the single greatest skill he had was knowing what products people wanted before they knew they wanted them.

I’m sure everyone’s thoughts are with Steve’s family, particularly his wife and four children.

Rest in peace Steve.

• Apple has six stores in China, bringing Apple’s total to 357 stores in 11 countries.
• More than 6 million copies of Lion have been downloaded since it launched in July. This is 80% more downloads than Snow Leopard.
• Macbook pro and iMac are the best selling noteboook and desktop in the U.S.
• There are 60 million Mac users around the world. Apple has sold 45 million iPods so far this year (ending in June).
• iPod marketshare in the U.S. is above 70%.
• iTunes users have downloaded more than 16 billion songs.
• iPhone has 5% of the Worldwide Mobile Phone market.
• More than half of all iPhones that have been sold were iPhone 4s.
• Apple has sold more than 250 million iOS devices.
• There are 500,000 apps in the app store, 140,000 of them are iPad apps.
• 1 billion apps are downloaded every month.18 billion apps have been download in the past three years.
• Apple has paid $3 billion to developers (while keeping 30% of revenue on their apps).

And ThingLink created this cool infographic charting the history of iPhone which helps to explain some of Apple’s successful stats. (Infographic via Mashable)

Nokia is hosting a free 2-days intensive workshop to explore user-experience on the new Nokia N9 smartphone. This workshop will be hosted at GITEX Technology week in Dubai on October 11th and 12th.

With Qt Quick and QML, you can create beautiful mobile applications where touch input, fluid animations and UX are crucial. Qt offers you a robust, tried and tested application and UI framework for the development of rich compelling apps for the new Nokia N9 smartphone and Nokia Symbian smartphones.

This will be a hands-on, classroom-style, setting where developers will be taught how to create mobile applications using Qt Quick for Nokia N9 smartphone, focusing on UI, Mobility APIs and the use of the new NFC technology APIs.

If you are curious to learn more about Qt Quick then this workshop will allow you to ask experts about its technical capabilities, exchange ideas with your peers, and see for yourself how Qt Quick will provide increased flexibility while reducing long term support costs.

Click here to find out more.

Here’s an infographic which summarises the findings of the primary research that we conducted with Real Opinions earlier this year. The research was sponsored by BlackBerry.

Watch a video of the research findings here.

twofour54 tadreeb is proud to announce the iPhone 360 Application Development Training Course …

Dates: October 22nd until December 12th (8 weeks – Saturdays only. No class on November 5th > Eid)
Timings: 10 am to 1 pm and 2 pm to 5 pm
Cost: 8,000 AED per delegate

For more information please click here.

AppsArabia is part of twofour54.

Thankfully, Microsoft have put a stop to the masses of poor quality apps being approved in the Windows Marketplace. The apps are basically RSS readers that focus on different subject matter. The problem is that these apps get in the way of the high quality apps that genuine publishers want to promote and consumers want to hear about.

Read more on TechCrunch.

Our friends at Distimo have published a report which examines the variations in the way that apps are published and consumed in the key markets around the world. It’s a very interesting read.

Distimo reports are available for free in PDF format if you provide your details via this link.

The Arab Advisors Group have announced their Smart Handheld Summit event will be taking place in Dubai on 5th & 6th December 2011.

For more information please click here.

HTC have said: “We believe that Windows Phone 7 will eventually be better than other platforms and will give Android a run for its money”. We couldn’t agree more!

Check out the full article including some interesting stats about the future market share of the smartphone operating systems.

According to a survey by UBS, Apple’s iPhone has an 89% retention rate – the highest of all smartphones and more than double its nearest rival HTC (39%). Wow!

Read more here.

Now that the new Mango update is nearly upon us, Microsoft has officially flipped the switch on their web marketplace for markets across the world.

There’s a great UI and single sign-in using Windows Live ID. Purchasing is simple using a credit card linked to your Windows Live ID and many apps allow you to “try before you buy”. There are rumours that operator billing will be possible soon so you can buy apps and have them charged to your mobile phone bill.

It’s not clear yet whether it is possible to publish apps within the MENA region without having to go through Yalla Apps. This’ll be great because publishers will then be able to earn 70% of gross revenue just like on every other platform.

We’re looking forward to the Mango update to Windows Phone 7 operating system any day now

Read all about it here.

Visit the Windows Marketplace here.