“The global Mobile App industry has been experiencing exponential growth, with the number of Apps covering all sorts of consumer needs expanding by the day. As the competition in this space grows, we held the first ever TikTok Apps Summit, bringing together pioneering figures from the industry, shedding light on global growth opportunities, and providing a space for them to collaborate, share expertise and learn about some the best examples of successful growth strategies,” commented Shadi Kandil, General Manager, Global Business Solutions, Middle East, Turkey, Africa, Central and South Asia, TikTok.

Apps’ user behavior is changing
An insightful deep dive into industry intelligence with Sensor Tower, an enterprise focusing on insights and analytics for Mobile Apps globally, showed:

• Users are becoming more selective and are close to finding sweet spots of apps that are worth their time and money. Data shows that over the last 5 years, there’s been a deceleration in app installs (only 5% CAGR), while spending on apps keeps growing year on year by 27% CAGR.
• Apps need to diversify their monetization strategy across subscriptions and one-time purchases: getting a download or a conversion is not the end of the road. Apps can maximize ARPU (Average revenue per user) by retargeting their users with add-ons and enriching their in-app experience.
• Adding AI features to an app leads to an immediate spike of 12% increase in revenue.

Community performance
On TikTok, content is curated based on what communities find entertaining. TikTok community has a diverse range of interests and a high level of engagement, which encourages them to contribute and join conversations – and brands can use this perfect blend for their benefit.

Communities play a significant role in driving stronger adoption, by adapting to the authentic behaviors of people living in a highly-informed and interconnected digital world. They seamlessly tackle the phases of the decision journey, but more importantly, the in-between phases.

1. Firstly, between awareness and consideration, communities provide social proof: an app is only worth my time and money if it’s worth other people’s time and money. Doubling social proof leads to double the downloads.
2. As users learn about the app’s selling proposition, and before they actually convert, communities help them understand how the app fits their lifestyle and needs: an app earns its slot on my home screen if it earns its slot in my daily life. Data shows that creator collaborations lead to an increase in purchases by 3.5 times.
3. Finally, what TikTok has shown time and again, is the ability of its communities to turn apps into sensations through orchestrated virality: an app deserves my advocacy only if it’s part of a larger conversation. Leveraging content engagement and virality can lead to a 2.5x increase in revenue.

Community performance, that TikTok uniquely offers, significantly impacts results across the conversion funnel. TikTok shared cases of brands who unlocked the influence of communities and how they were able to increase conversion rate by 41%, decrease customer acquisition cost by 18% and boost overall quality lead-generation by +22%. The more brands deploy and leverage the communities, the bigger their addressable audience and the more cost effective and efficient their strategy is.

Symphony: TikTok’s AI-powered creative solutions
During the event TikTok gave an update on its recently introduced range of creative product suite called Symphony, which helps businesses of all sizes, creators and agencies blend human imagination with AI-powered efficiency to scale content development, creativity, and productivity on TikTok. Now apps companies can maximize their return on creative: with ideation, script generation, avatar video generation and dubbing to 10+ languages and dialects, Symphony Studio drives efficiencies across the entire production process, while ensuring videos are TikTok-optimized.

Apps going global: geographical expansion on TikTok
TikTok works closely with app businesses to find opportunities and create strategies not only to capitalise their initial markets, but to expand globally. The platform helps businesses understand which markets show the best potential for them, learn consumers’ needs and preferences to better inform the strategy, localise their app creatives to resonate with consumers and, finally, apply best practices in order to drive tangible results. The approach to a successful geographical expansion strategy on TikTok consists of 4 steps:

1. Identifying the markets that work best for the brand,
2. Understanding everything about the relevant TikTok communities in the targeted countries: from digital shopping habits ,
3. Localising creative assets,
4. Optimising performance by testing new audiences, refreshing creatives and adapting offerings.

Success story
One of the great examples of capitalising on the platform’s opportunities is the campaign by Careem Quick, a widely popular superapp from the MENA region. The brand used TikTok to boost its grocery segment discovery and conversion, measure the effectiveness of its performance campaign and increase cross-selling with current user base. They utilised a TikTok Measurement Marketing Partner to build customized user lists, as well as used audience split tests to measure lift in discovery and first orders. As a result, the app discoveries increased by almost 6% on iOS and by 25% on Android, whilst first orders on iOS increased by 15%.

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PayBy’s popularity has surged on account of its user-friendly interface, safety and security features, and for simplifying payments; as well as the soaring demand for contactless payments.

PayBy also enables P2P (peer to peer) payments, making it easy to pay tradespeople, pay tips, or even split the bill in a restaurant. It can be used to send cash gifts without additional charges.PayBy can also be used for payments at some of the UAE’s largest retailers such as LuLu, Al Maya Supermarkets Al Maria Pharmacy, and Al Ain Pharmacy. Shoppers only need to show their payment QR codes on their phones to the cashier.

The PayBy wallet can be topped up using bank cards or cash, through 850 uPay and 4500 NT.Payments kiosks located throughout the UAE.
Innovative fintech enterprise PayBy was launched in the UAE in 2020 to support the region’s cashless economy by providing a variety of fintech solutions for businesses and consumers.

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“After eight years of searching for, downloading and using smartphone apps, users are maturing in their usage behaviors,” said Brian Blau, research director at Gartner.” However, we may see those patterns change in the future as users integrate apps more deeply into their daily lives.”

User interest in apps has mellowed now that they have integrated apps into their use of personal technology and their interaction with brands while online. Although usage remains high, users may not want or need more apps in the future. This is cause for some concern for app providers because if users become too complacent then app businesses could suffer from lack of engagement or slowing growth.

In order to quantify how users feel about their use of apps, Gartner conducted a survey of more than 2,000 U.S. and German consumers in 2014. Both countries are considered mature markets and thus comparisons can be made with other markets that are more or less mature in terms of mobile app adoption. The survey looked at current app behaviors and how consumers intend to use apps in the future as well as shedding light on how consumers perceive their individual app usage by category, and how much they intend to use apps in the future.

Respondents were asked which apps they had used on their smartphone in the last three months and how frequently they had used them. While it is clear that app use is high across all categories, some categories of apps, such as social networking and video, have a very high overall weekly usage. Usage rates, some approaching daily use for most users, are consistent with other observations of the marketplace, such as how businesses brand and use apps as a main touchpoint.

Even for a less-used app category, for example fitness, there is high use within that group. Fitness has only 23 percent and 16 percent use (in the U.S. and Germany, respectively) among all smartphone users, but for those who use fitness apps, more than seven out of 10 are using those apps weekly or more frequently.

According to the survey, smartphone users are content with their current level of interest in apps. With such a strong indication of users keeping the status quo, Gartner expects to see a continued high level of interest in apps. That interest, however, may not change dramatically over time and engagement with apps overall may be reaching a plateau. Although this may be good news for app engagement overall, app product managers will be challenged to create and monetize new opportunities because many users won’t change their app consumption patterns

“It’s not that smartphone users have lost interest in apps, users remain excited about what apps can do for them in their daily lives, including for work and nonwork app scenarios,” said Mr. Blau. “However, app users need to be convinced about the value of the app. Their willingness for new app experiences is open-ended, but their plan is to keep their same patterns of use. Users will try new apps, but they need to be convinced of an app’s value before they adopt them and change use patterns over the long term.”

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With more and more companies hiring skilled developers to build in mobile applications, it’s clear that apps are here to stay and the need to integrate them into our class curricula is becoming clear. From social media and communications to shopping and entertainment, there is an app for just about any activity you can think of. Given smartphone penetration amongst today’s young adults, (79% of the 18-24 year-old range), it’s not surprising that students today know more than adults about what is happening in the mobile world.

As a teacher, you can help your students navigate the digital wave by teaching them how to make and market their own apps and to understand the implications of the broader app economy. Over four practical sessions, students will learn how mobile apps work, how to create a well-designed app, and how to market their finished products. Lastly, and perhaps most important, they will have learned that making apps is easy and can be a real expression of their creative ideas.

With the AppMakr school curriculum, which is free for all users, students will be emboldened to find they can actually have a voice and be powerful participants in the burgeoning digital economy. At the end of the workshop, students will walk away with their very own native Android App, as well as an HTML5 mobile web site that will work on an iPhone, Microsoft, or Blackberry smartphone.

Based on the ebook, “The Monkey’s Guide to Mobile Apps,” this curriculum is well adapted for non-traditional classrooms, homeschooling, and unschooling, and can even be utilized as an adult continuing education workshop.

The hands-on approach encourages student-to-student interaction as a way to help participants retain the materials discussed. If you’ve been intimidated by the pace of technological progress in recent years, this is a great way to stay abreast of current developments and cultivate the next generation of entrepreneurial talent. And best of all, your students will have a lot of fun doing it.

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This Facebook event was designed to help rapidly growing, leading start-ups and VC backed companies in the Middle East accelerate user growth, engagement and ultimately drive greater business results by leveraging Facebook’s acquisition and distribution tools – both organic and paid.

Speakers at the event included Nicola Mendelsohn, the Vice President of Facebook EMEA; Julien Codorniou, the Director of Platform EMEA at Facebook; and Jonathan Labin, the Head of Facebook MENA.

Topics covered at the event included:

1. Make the best of the Facebook Platform, on web/mobile and discover Parse
2. Create a seamless login and user registration flow to optimize your conversion rate
3. Share beautiful stories in news feed to get discovered by the people who matter to your business, in the place where they discover the things that matter most to them
4. Leverage our unique targeting tools to reach your existing customers on Facebook and also identify high potential prospects with similar characteristics
5. Reach and acquire high-value users at scale using Mobile App Ads

This half-day session was also capped off with office-hours with Facebook’s product and marketing specialists where startups could dive into what they have learned in more depth. The event as mentioned before was geared towards startup founders, and all those focused on marketing, growth, and user acquisition.

For further information, you can email: fbstarteu@fb.com

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Developers will then receive a full report on the bug, a screenshot, and relevant information about the user’s device.

The Egyptian startup has been working with over 200 beta testers, including SNCF, the national rail company of France. It recently won first place in a MIT’s Enterprise Forum for the Pan Arab region, a startup competition serving the Middle East, North Africa, and the Persian Gulf.

According to the founders Omar Gabr and Moataz Soliman, both 22-years-old, it’s still business as usual. Post the beta launch, Instabug’s team are eager for app developers to sign up.

“The idea originally initiated from our sense that we want to build a startup for startups, as the startup ecosystem is growing at a huge rate, and we wanted to contribute to it,” said Gabr.

Gabr started the company to benefit startups in Egypt and other tech hubs around the world. It’s designed for developers who need a better way to communicate with their first set of consumers and avoid negative reviews in the App Store.

“In the mobile world, you don’t have a lot of time with your consumers — if you have a bad experience, that company might be done,” said Sean Jacobsohn of Silicon Valley-based venture firm Emergence Capital.

Too often, developers will receive a negative rating for their new app but don’t receive thorough feedback on how to improve the experience or fix a bug in real time.

Instabug asks users to simply shake their iPhone, and it automatically takes a screenshot of the bug to submit to the developer. It takes consumers to an internal feedback page to leave a short comment.

Developers will then receive a detailed report containing the feedback and information such as the device model, memory and storage usage as well as the Wi-Fi and carrier and the user’s location.

Instabug has raised a total of $150,000 in seed funding from angel investors based in Egypt. They received their first $10,000 from Flat6Labs, a local startup accelerator program.

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The day-long event is open to all developers, both novice and advanced, and will take place on Thursday, January 10 from 8:30 am. In addition to learning skills from Intigral’s leading developers prizes will also be awarded to participants.

Popular world over, hackathons are community-focused events that bring together application developers, computer programmers, software professionals and technology enthusiasts to collaborate, learn and develop new apps and software.

“The developer community in Saudi has been growing at an exponential rate and has shown huge potential especially when it comes to creating local, regionally relevant content,” said Mazroua Almazroua, Developers Community Manager, Intigral. “The hackathon aims to bring together all Saudi software developers to drive new innovation and raise the level of awareness on the recent trends in operating systems and applications on a regional level.”

The sports hackathon is an STC initiative and part of a series of events aimed at application developers across Saudi Arabia.

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