Former Zain exec to launch Arabic mobile apps mall

It’s only a couple of issues ago that Abdul Malek Al Jaber was on the front cover of Global Telecoms Business, having been interviewed as CEO of Zain Jordan and COO — effectively number two — of Zain group.
That interview was carried out the morning after Al Jaber appeared at the GTB Innovation Awards to accept a trophy for a mobile financial services package that Zain was rolling out to its Middle East customers.
So what’s he doing having breakfast in a London hotel talking about his new start-up? No longer in Zain, Al Jaber has just arrived after a coast-to-coast round of business meetings in the US. From London he’s heading south before returning to his new office in Amman, the capital of Jordan.
“Operators are missing the point. They are in danger of becoming dumb pipes,” says Al Jaber, who decided not to renew his contract with Zain after the end of June.
In his last GTB interview he gave a clue to his plans, though no one at the time expected him to decide to realise them outside Zain. He said then that he wanted to set up an alliance to make it easier for Arabic content providers to win business in their region.
At the time it appeared that he was aiming to do this from within Zain. However, he has decided that it is better to set up a new company, MENA Apps, which is aiming to go into service in early 2012.
MENA Apps will be an Arabic content company for the Middle East and North Africa — hence the name — but it is modelled on the OneAPI alliance that was set up in Canada by three operators, Bell Canada, Rogers and Telus, in 2010 to open their networks to local content developers.
Something like OneAPI is what mobile operators in the Arabic world need, says Al Jaber, a Palestine-born Canadian citizen.
The main leaders of the industry “still think in terms of access, selling minutes or data in speed and megabytes, not services”, he says. “Telecoms operators still don’t think they’re service providers.”
If they keep on along their current path, they will lose to companies such as Apple, Google and Microsoft’s Skype, he suggests.

New revenue streams

“It is really encouraging” to see the Canadian platform, “to capture new revenue streams and respond to customer needs”. But that’s Canada. “In the Middle East it’s still not there. There’s still the old dynamic of the market.”
Al Jaber, who ran Palestine’s Paltel before joining Zain in 2009, admits that he has been in the same position himself. “Zain looked at itself as a mobile operator, selling mobile minutes. You have to capitalise on that opportunity in the market.” But that leaves out many market opportunities, such as serving enterprises: in terms of connectivity, enterprise is not a core business, he says. “The core business is mobile minutes.”
Zain was moving into services such as mobile money — hence the GTB award this year, and other awards in previous years — but the revenue was relatively small. “But compare doing nothing. Operators are making a fundamental mistake,” he says. Services affect relationships with customers and have an effect on churn. “It is a fundamental issue.”
So what is this Arabic API that Al Jaber’s new company plans to launch in 2012? “It’s a services platform, with potential for applications and content, including mobile advertising. There’s a huge gap in the market.”
Arabic is the first language of an estimated 340 million people. “There are three key markets: Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Dubai,” he says: Egypt because of its 83 million population, the other two because of their disposable incomes. “These three countries represent 60% of the market potential.”
Already 85% of the searches in the area are in Arabic, but the results do not understand the local requirements, he says. “There is no platform that addresses the uniqueness of the Arabic world.”
He cites two examples — financial information and entertainment. “On Apple you can get stock exchange information on the Nasdaq, the NYSE or London, but there’s nothing on the Dubai exchange or the Saudi exchange,” he complains.
Similarly, there is no entertainment information for Dubai, Saudi Arabia or Jordan, no movie information for Amman or Dubai.

Financial information

MENA Apps plans two kinds of service. First, generic services such as information about finance, movies, the weather and so on, which would all apply to a particular city or country. These would be offered to all operators in the area, “but would be branded as per the requirement of each operator”.
They would list the same movies, “but it would be up to the operator to bundle the service and perhaps to deal with the cinema over discounted tickets and so on”.
But the other option is “unique content for the operator”, he says. “The operator would get it from MENA Apps on an exclusive basis and it would be branded for that operator,” he says.
The company is funded, says Al Jaber, though he won’t say on the record who the backers are. And it has already recruited developers, in Jordan, Egypt and Tunisia. “Dubai is our marketing headquarters.”
The work the developers are doing “is based on our assessment of market needs, from our understanding of the Arab world”, he says. The company is talking to potential customer “and we are looking at what’s happening around the world. What are the applications that are doing well? We are trying to localise them.”
A third element is to open up “to all developers around the world, in say New York and London, if it’s relevant to the Arab world”, says Al Jaber. “Our platform is open to the developers. We have commercial agreements with the developers.”
The aim is to provide content to Arabic-speaking customers in the Middle East and North Africa, “with one touch, a maximum of two touches”, giving them information about information, business, the weather and so on. It would be branded to each operator’s name.
“It means developers don’t have to go to all the operators one by one. They can come to this platform and that would be open to all operators. This is open to everybody.”
Al Jaber “has already started talking to operators”, he says, “and we can see the excitement. Some of the content is beautiful, exciting.”

Cloud computing

But he’s already looking ahead, considering opportunities in cloud computing, so that operators can offer services to their customers. “Operators are struggling to know how to do it. We are negotiating with some of the cloud computing operators to see what is the most relevant service to offer to the end users.”
And then there’s online advertising, “already very big in the European and North American markets”, he says. “Print advertising is dying,” he says. “The trend is to mobile and online advertising and the technology is tailor-made for the industry. Online advertising is still emerging.”
But cloud services and online advertising are not scheduled for the start of MENA Apps. “They will come later in 2012,” he says — indicating the wait will not be that long, after a launch of the apps service in the first quarter of the year.
When, precisely? “We will start seeing actual contracts in 2012. We have no intent of going prematurely.”
There’s logic in that. “I don’t want the mall to be empty before we start. I want that mall to be full from day one.” He’s focusing on developing the applications for the mobile mall, so that when it launches in the new year the operators’ customers will have plenty to choose from.
“That’s where the focus is,” he says. “We want genuine content. We are working to fill all the stores with goods.”
The project will be “good for operators”, he says. “We’re not taking a risk by developing the platform and hiring programmers.” He’s deliberately vague — for understandable commercial reasons — about the details of the project. “We have people working for us, mainly young, very smart, innovative guys with ideas I’m amazed with.” He’s working with “50-60 start-ups” and looking at their ideas too.
MENA Apps will go public with more of its plans before the end of 2011, says Al Jaber. “But the digital mall is due to be open in the first quarter of 2012,” he repeats.
What sort of company will it be? “It will be Google-style,” he says. “There are no office hours. They go and sit in places and think. It’s a relaxed and friendly environment. It’s just lovely.”
There’s clearly a good business case for a mobile apps company — and maybe more — for the huge, underserved Arabic-speaking world, and for Arabic speakers around the world. But there’s something of a mission in Al Jaber’s eyes as he speaks of this, an opportunity that has opened up in the Middle East and North Africa particularly this year.
“We’re opening up a whole window for new jobs in the Arab world,” he says. “We will allow all these young kids to sell their products.” And there will be business opportunities for them: “This mall is big. With this API open to operators you can make money.” GTB