Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Are Arabic Apps relevant?

Last night a friend and I were discussing about the relevance of Arabic Apps. We had a few interesting arguments for developing Arabic apps vs. going global.
What speaks against Arabic Apps:
  • Domestic Arabic app economy is not large enough. Using national or local content will not be profitable.
  • Users adopted to use Apps in English or French partly feel more comfortable with it
  • It is hard to be profitable with Arabic apps. This is because credit card penetration is low and number jail broken devices are high. There is still no culture of paying for software.
  • Arabs do not always share the same culture e.g. a user from Marocco might have a different sense of humour than a user from Iraq.