Interest in the electronic application industry in Egypt is increasing with the increase in talk about digital transformation and automation of services, but among the dozens of mobile phone applications that are made by developers in Egypt, only a limited number continues to compete and provide its services to the public, as the lion's share of follow-up and use is mostly for foreign applications.
This is what was supported by an official statistic of the Egyptian Communications Regulatory Authority on the sixth of last September, which revealed that social media applications, instant messages exchange such as WhatsApp and movie views occupied the lion's share among the applications used during the year, as the number of social media users reached two million users by 52 million visits per hour, consuming 19 thousand terabytes, while instant chats were used by 1.5 million users per hour, applications and movie viewership sites recorded 1.4 million views and 89 thousand hours of views, with a data size of 38 terabytes per hour.
"It is related to the level of culture and the prevailing social situation," this is confirmed by the software developer, Engineer Muhammad Hani, to Al-Jazeera Net, indicating that the matter does not depend on Egypt only, but also applies to the entire Arab region that has spent about 10 years in conflicts, revolutions and social transformations, which helped to The growth of the use of social networking applications, and thus the interest in the electronic application industry diminished, unlike the European countries that have stability and interest in the application industry.
Observers of the technology reality in Egypt finds that the phrase “system is a reality, regret,” has always been a problem facing many citizens within government agencies, similar to the postal service, supply or other services, which is what made Dr. Hala Al-Saeed, Minister of Planning and Economic Development, finally confirms the direction for coordination between ministries In order to improve services provided to citizens and solve the problem.
Hani comments, saying, "The digital transition in Egypt and the Arab world is still new due to the infrastructure that has not yet been developed," noting that there is a shortage in the field of education in the Arab world, which makes the industry and use of electronic applications a new arrival for many citizens in Egypt, in light of High rates of illiteracy, as the number of illiterates is 18.4 million, at a rate of 25.8% in the latest official statistics for monitoring the illiteracy rate in Egypt.
Hani explained why most programmers in Egypt tend to work for self-employment or through emerging companies to the weak investment environment in the field and the companies' lack of tendency to implement their own applications aimed at the public since the matter is still new in Egypt, stressing that there is a need for more attention to the field through The tendency of companies and entrepreneurship institutions and business incubators to support and invest in the software industry;
In order for the application industry to flourish, with a focus on feasibility studies for applications and the target groups for launching them.
Despite this, many Egyptian applications have succeeded in achieving momentum around them and even winning international competitions, such as the application of "Hawaya", one of the marriage applications that was established in 2017, and witnessed a mass momentum recently with the outbreak of the Corona pandemic, reaching a number of Arab and foreign countries, the last of which is Canada. .
Also, the application "Ask Nemeisa" created by the Egyptian AI company "DXwand", which won the award for the best technological projects in the world last April, through 350 members of the jury in the global competition "# BuildforCOVID19".
The application works to help governments interact with Corona patients and provide information about the virus, and the application won among 1561 projects submitted from 175 countries.
And there is the "Shezlong" application, which was able to reach many Arab countries during the past period. The Egyptian application is the first electronic psychological clinic that includes 500 psychiatrists to serve as a means of communicating with patients, providing psychological counseling and treating addiction problems in an interactive manner.
The startups and those looking to market their products are the most interested in the application industry. Nevertheless, a limited percentage of these companies have success, and this is evident in the cessation of many applications after failing to reach the public, similar to the application of "Jaridat", an Egyptian application that was specialized in By delivering newspapers to citizens on a daily basis, and there is also the "Haidma Store" application that was established by a number of Egyptian youths to sell attractive T-shirts with phrases written in Arabic such as "Tighten your tricks", "If you believe determination, you will find the way" and others.
In this context, the programmer and developer, Engineer Mohamed Abdel Salam - during his speech to Al Jazeera Net - believes that part of the reasons for the lack of interest in the production of applications is due to the need for more mastery of production, which needs a thorough study from the beginning, starting with the design of the application and passing through with feasibility studies and studying the market and the public The beneficiary, in a way that helps provide real solutions to a problem, which is the main goal of creating applications, and by achieving this, it may contribute to making the field of application programming in Egypt more important.