IN a major step towards turning the KSA to a knowledge-based economy country, to establish a solid future for the coming generation, the Kingdom is currently investing heavily in integrating technology in educational system. With the growing trends and the explosion of local mobile applications' development across the Kingdom, our every day routines, lifestyle and productivity has significantly changed. Consumers continue to engage and adopt a wide variety of quality local apps that makes their everyday life more enjoyable and productive. Family pictures are now edited and shared on the spot, ordering food and grocery in a click, getting your laundry picked-up, booking flight getting from point A to point B is now effortless and right from the comfort of your couch. Since the launch of Apple's App Store in 2008, an entire global industry has been build around apps' design and development. In just over six years, the Apple iOS ecosystem has created thousands of jobs and apps across the Middle East with thousands of members in the paid developer program. This new ecosystem has created its own strong players in the region – young and well-educated entrepreneurs gaining success in the global arena. Over the last couple of years, the Middle East region has become the hot-bed for innovations across the region and home to some of the best young entrepreneurs — including leading developers such Lamsa, Lumba and Growl Media. With reading habits across the region falling sharply, developers across the region are looking into ways to create apps that aim to create a generation of book lovers and consolidate the region's position as a global hub for culture and knowledge. For Apple iOS app developer Badr Ward, CEO of Lamsa, one of the region's top educational Arabic language application for children age 1-8, encouraging creativity and allowing kids to learn to read Arabic in an interactive and fun way reflects his commitment to encouraging children across the Kingdom to learn to read in Arabic. In the last couple of years, the number of culturally relevant educational material available for children of all ages began to multiply rapidly. With apps like Lamsa, parents has more relevant educational apps to choose from to help teach their children to read. The focus for Badr is to usher in natural appreciation, pride of the Arabic language and reading back to this next generation, in a fun exciting and engaging manner. Following the birth of his two children, Badr realized the need for high quality digital applications and content that could help children acquire early education in Arabic. Determined to resolve this challenge for thousands of parents living across the region and struggling to teach their children Arabic, Badr moves on to put together a talented team of parents to start making a difference and develop Lamsa. Beyond the belief that every child deserves education, he believed in the importance of play, imagination, creativity and exploration. Badr Ward, explains how he is always asked why he chose the education industry, he responds: "Honestly, education chose us. We always wanted do something of value, something to enrich our society to combat lack of reading and lack of knowledge. We wanted to give children of our region hope, something to look up to, something that transports them from the mundane reality into a beautiful world where they can be anything they want to, do anything they want to a world full of love, hope and inspiration." Since it's launch in 2013, Lamsa is about edutainment, encouraging children to read and learn Arabic. It is about motivating young children age 1-8, a crucial age group for learning a language and acquiring values and to think, explore and find solutions to make sense out of the different the world around them. Today Lamsa has over 4 million downloads and 320 million content reads. Lamsa content is created in two ways. Behind Lamsa, there is an in-house team of 50 staff, some of whom have backgrounds working at Disney or in the animation industry in Japan, and all of whom are developing original content. There are also partnerships with content providers, such as children's authors, illustrators and publishers, as well as academic institutions, NGOs and movement entities in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Lamsa is a Middle East homegrown initiative brought to life with the existence of Apple iOS app store, a powerful and loved haven for thousands of developers across the globe and partnerships and link-ups with MBC, Iftah Ya Simsim and Soon Virgin Megastore that contributed to Lamsa's unprecedented success. Shatha Faiz, mother of 4-year-old son speaks of Lamsa saying, "My son totally loves the app and is engaged with all it's categories. Contents and subjects are very well chosen. [Lamsa] Graphics are nice and bright. An Arabic educating app that compete with English apps." With reading habits falling sharply among young children, Lamsa founder realized the significance of presenting it as a book to be read, rather than one-dimensional icons, and increasing the stories accessible through the app to bring children back to reading. So while it introduces young children to basics numbers, alphabet, colors, animal names, letters and words, the app now also raises awareness about a range of environmental and humanitarian issues through the hundreds of stories and videos. In only few years, the app received tremendous amount of interest from the local KSA community. It has also won the Arabic e-content Award at the United Nations' World Summit Awards. With the availability of the App Store, app development in the Middle East region is moving ahead with technology and creativity. The Middle East region is up for major innovation and significant advancement in app development to come through in the near future.
