The future economy of the Middle East is changing. The emphasis upon both traditional industries and modern petrochemical resources is now giving way to the so-called ‘services based economy’. This new modern economic model encompasses everything from tourism to e-commerce and healthcare to scientific research.

Perhaps most central to Arabia’s future development are advances being made in technology and telecommunications. As we look to nations like Saudi Arabia with its plans to build mega-cities 30 times the size of New York, we can see that the deployment of mobile connectivity layers to serve both smartphones and smart cities will be fundamentally important. Across every city in the Middle East we now need to developer a deep level of mobile connectivity engineered into the very fabric of new and existing infrastructures. We need, if you will, to go not just mobile, but ultramobile.

Hello ultramobile

The Middle East’s smart cities will use ultramobile connectivity not just to allow people to talk to each other; new approaches in key growth areas include energy efficiency, regional livestock farming and dairy, waste management and entertainment. But it’s what happening at a deeper level that concerns us first.

Life on the still-developing ultramobile economic curve is difficult. The biggest challenges come about as a result of mobile’s highly fragmented landscape when we consider the entire Middle East region. Disposable income levels vary significantly across Arab states, as does the availability of funds for investment in telecommunications infrastructures. But these disparities are not indicators in the traditional sense.

Even in Arab economies with greater numbers of people falling into lower social demographics, mobile penetration is high. This is Arabian ultramobility in all its unprejudiced glory. A Moroccan farmer who doesn’t own a television is still likely to have a favourite ringtone and network (or at least a handful) of contacts.

Arabia off the hook

Despite pockets of growth, we must still insist that ultramobility in the Middle East is off the hook. This is because the Middle East has failed to follow Africa in its use of mobile microservices that allow even low income ‘just barely connected’ users to perform banking transactions, book healthcare visits and other core life-related functions.

Our Moroccan ringtone farmer suddenly looks less ultramobile and rather more only-just mobile. Even our pregnant Kuwaiti businesswoman (you didn’t miss anything - she’s new to the story) isn’t getting the same Arabic-localised virtual mobile midwife service that her counterparts in Kenya are getting.

The Middle East shares many life parallels with central Africa, not least of which are its concern over water supplies and the management of dairy cattle. So why aren’t we using ultramobile to microfinance small business entrepreneurs like Africa is? Why aren’t we using ultramobile to develop new software applications that make life better? The clue is in the question: home grown Arab software development will be the key.

“The lack of advanced mobile services or ultramobility in our region is driven by various factors, however the biggest issue is the lack of innovation stemming from pure research and development. Generally speaking, the Middle East is built on consumerism. Technology is imported or Arabised and sometimes localised without real local innovation happening, said Ziad Al-Masri, co-founder and CMO of Jordanian technology services company Varari.

Recalibrating our collective mindset

“There is virtually no ecosystem to allow for research that thinks about development 10-years down the line. This is because investors, whether they be government or private, usually look for ‘immediate’ returns that can typically be reaped in under three years. Local software developers, designers, engineers and data scientists all exist - and have many bright spots across the region in the incubators and accelerators - but too much of our thinking is programmed to think short term,” insists Al-Masri.

So we need to recalibrate our collective mindset to a new timeline and we need Arab language programmers, developers and software engineers of all levels to start creating new services tuned to our home market. African microservice healthcare or finance apps can’t just be ‘re-skinned’ with a new graphical user interface and set to work in Oman or any other Arab state, it just doesn’t work. We need ultramobile innovations attuned to the Arabic language, Arab user behaviour and Arab legislative and corporate compliance needs.

“The main reason the Middle East falls behind in mobile innovation is its lack of focus on, and understand of, Arab customers’ experiences and needs”, said Magnus Jern, chief innovation officer at mobile services management platform company DMI. “Looking at Kenya, the success of M-Pesa micropayments is because it fulfilled a defined need in the market; the population’s desire to digitally transfer small payments for various purposes.”

Jern points to similar success in Denmark and Sweden with Swish and MobilePay, which was was based on customers’ appetites for easier mobile transactions - although the collaboration with the major banks contributed to their success. In both examples, the mobile solutions succeeded because the technology providers had a clear understanding of the market, enabling them to create accessible solutions for the majority that are easy to use.

“Looking at the Middle East, most micropayment services have failed to make payment platforms easier than using cash or credit cards, it is here that the Middle East can learn from the success stories in Kenya, Denmark and Sweden where there is a clear understanding of the end user’s needs,” said Jern. “But we can say that ultramobility is already happening for SMBs in the Middle East, with many employees working remotely with access to information, useful tools and the assurance that their work is secure. These businesses now use existing cloud services from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce and others providers.

Infrastructure for the long game

DMI’s Jern asserts that the main challenge for Arabian ultramobility lies within larger companies, as the transition to cloud services is more complicated with legacy systems, security problems, resistance to change and management control requirements. Larger Arab businesses will need to reinvent themselves for this ultramobile world, rather than migrating existing infrastructure to the cloud, as this is likely to fail. Once again, it’s about playing the long game.

“If the average innovation cycle, according to popular wisdom, means it takes an average of seven years for consumer uptake of a new product or service, then it is also about investment in long-term behavioural change. So if it is to be worth the investment, the demand has to be there,” Jasmine Montgomery, CEO and founder of Bahrain and Oman headquartered multi-cultrual communications agency Seven Brands. “To change consumer habits and get people to adopt new ways of doing things requires powerful branding and communication which breaks the mould, is based on deep insights and supports genuine unmet needs.”

Montgomery points to as Tito Alai, one of the founders of Celtel Celpay, the developing world’s first mobile money transfer service, in Zambia in 2002 (well before M-Pesa came about), who said: “The success of mobile is Africa’s entry into the digital century and will propel the continent to take its rightful place in the global economic order.” She suggests that the challenge for the Middle East is to find the same sense of imperative for change to take root.

We now have a chance to engineer ultramobility across all 22 Arab League economies. To do this we need to charge up local empowerment and halt the Middle Eastern propensity to simply ‘buy in’ what we don’t find on our doorstep. Even hobbyists can make an impact using the new breed of ‘low code’ programming platforms - if you have an idea, you can push your dream into reality.

Ultramobile has your number; it’s time to answer the call!