Mobile Apps: Is Arabic less popular in UAE?

Arabic mobile applications are downloaded far too fewer times in the United Arab Emirates compared to any other country in the region.

Saudi Arabia leads the list in terms of popularity of Arabic apps. About 89 per cent of people in the kingdom download Arabic apps regularly compared to just about 39 per cent in the UAE.

Well, before you can come to any conclusions about the language preference here, the result is a reflection of the cosmopolitan culture and  a large presence of expat population in the UAE.

The results were revealed by  Nader Kobeissi, Managing Director Mena of On Device Research on the sidelines of the ongoing two-day Arabnet Digital Summit 2015 in Dubai.

“Dubai’s numbers are low, simply because of the large number of expat population and a very active app download pattern among Westerners and Europeans,” says Kobeissi.

“About 70 per cent of Westerners, including Europeans download more than 5 apps in a month and did so during the past month and these are mostly apps in English,” he said.

The popularity of Arabic apps among the Arabs in the UAE, however, continue to remain high, at about 68 per cent and on par with Egypt. In Jordan 70 per cent of the apps downloaded are Arabic, compared to 54 per cent in Lebanon.

However, the survey also points out almost 34 per cent of those polled, which covered about 500 users from each country in the region, did prefer international apps, while about 31 to 30 per cent said they did not find what they wanted in Arabic and failed to find good quality Arabic apps.

Gaming apps continue to remain the most popular category in the region, followed by social media and music.

About the most downloaded apps, gaming related apps stood at 60 per cent, compared to 16 per cent of health and fitness related apps and 18 per cent of shopping related apps.

Utility related apps are downloaded mostly by those over 30 years – while, lifestyle, shopping and education are the three most popular categories among female mobile users.

The survey also revealed details about the nature of app purchases. “Majority of those buying apps - about 39 per cent - are doing so not because of its advanced features, but to avoid advertising,” says Kobeissi. About 37 per cent do so for additional content while, 29 per cent buy something which has been previewed on screen.

According to the survey, about 37 per cent of those buying apps go ahead and make in-app purchases and about 53 per cent don’t spend any money on buying apps and  majority of them simply because there are not many interesting apps out there in the market.

“Almost 20 per cent don’t trust the payment security system, while 16 per cent cannot find what they want to buy,” he said.

Saudi Arabic again continued to lead the numbers in terms of app purchases with about 51 per cent of users having paid to download apps, compared to 41 per cent in the UAE and Lebanon.

 

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