Tag: Sarmady

ContactCars Launches Arabic iPhone App For Egyptian Car Market

MMM

ContactCars, the Egyptian portal that provides news and car specs and prices in for the Egyptian market has gone on and launched an Arabic iPhone app for their service, aiming to make it easier for users to access the information they provide while on the go.

The application, just like the site itself, provides a variety of information about cars available in the Egyptian market, with the goal of providing the information a user needs to be able to choose the best car that suits his budget and needs.

It offers the possibility of checking the latest car prices and their features from the various car models out in the market, with photos of each car and its specifications, as well as a list of similar cars the user might be interested in. Cars can be browsed and searched through either by model or price.

Read More

ITIDA And Vodafone Egypt Launch MobileAppsAcademy For Egyptian Mobile Developers

MMM 1 Comment

MobileAppsAcademyEgypt’s Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) is partnering up with Vodafone Egypt to launch MobileAppsAcademy, a contest and a program for sponsoring developers of mobile programs and applications in Egypt.

The initiative aims at preparing a generation of talented developers and helping them generate innovative ideas conforming to the needs of the Egyptian and Middle Eastern market.

Another purpose of this initiative is to highlight Egypt as a regional hub for projects and ideas and to encourage the creation of high-quality mobile applications. It aims to work on raising the local production through encouraging and sponsoring the skills of local developers, offering opportunities for talented Egyptians and turning their ideas into real projects that can contribute to the development of the ICT sector.

Read More

Kotob Arabia Bets On Mobile Fueling Arab e-Book Revolution

MMM 2 Comments

KotobArabiaKotob Arabia, a Cairo-based online publisher of more than 4,000 Arabic e-books, and its founder and director Ramy Habeeb, foresee that mobile phones’ deep market penetration in the region, combined with the most popular e-book readers’ high price tags and inability to read Arabic’s right-to-left script, make the mobile phone a platform of choice for any coming e-book revolution in the Arab world.

Kotob Arabia recently signed a deal to create the first Arabic mobile book reader with Blackbetty Mobilmedia, a Viennese company that creates software that make books readable on mobile phones. The partners plan to present a prototype of the new Arabic mobile e-book reader at next month’s Frankfurt Book Fair.

Blackbetty and Kotobarabia plan to roll out a premium SMS billing system in which e-book purchases would show up on a buyer’s phone bill, starting with Vodafone in Germany, then Vodafone in Egypt and other mobile networks across the region.

Kotob Arabia became an affiliate of Sarmady, the popular Egyptian internet portal that was acquired by Vodafone Egypt last year, and so it already has a relationship with the company that should make it easier for them to roll out their mobile e-book service with them.

In May, the company made an important step of switching from a traditional e-book sales approach to a subscription service, where readers pay a subscription fee and then get access to the full book catalogue. This would give readers access to the list of books they know as well as to books by other authors who aren’t as famous. This way the reader benefits, and on the other hand all authors who have their e-books on the service get a chance to be read and start making money out of it.

This subscription model also is quite an appealing one for the mobile realm, one that can’t be realised in more developed markets because of book price regulation.

Source: The National