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#ArabNetME Day 1 Coverage

March 23rd, 2011

So, I arrived earlier… one disappointment was the call desk for the Habtoor Hotel, they were clueless about the event… However, I met Farah at 8:00am exactly and had the chance to meet Motea Alwan, a very interesting Syrian blogger based in Amman.

Event started smoothly at 9:00am, where Omar Christidis took the stage and introduced a panel of 4 interesting people: Mr. Ghassan Chahine, DPE Lead, Lebanon and NEPA – IM, Microsoft / Mr. Gilles Fayad, Director of VAS, Middle East and Africa, Qualcomm / Mr. Rob Jonas, VP & Managing Director, Europe & Middle East, InMobi / Mr. William Kanaan, New Business Development Manager, MENA, Google.

I had the chance to ask William Kanaan an interesting question since he was talking about Android and MENA, and how the Android Market was recently introduced in the region, someone jumped asking him about how Amazon App Market is going to take part in Android and he answered as if the Amazon market works in MENA which drove me nuts, so I went and asked the following: Mr William, when do you think us in MENA region will be able to have paid apps instead of the free ones only? and what can we do regarding Google blocking VPNs and other illegal ways for us to download some essential apps and games such as “Angry Birds Rio” on Android because even Amazon is not supporting our countries?

William’s face turned purple, and his answer was “We don’t know when will it be available for our region but it is coming soon”… Which is expected from him to say!

However, for more please follow me on twitter on @moeys or the hashtag #ArabNetME – Here’s tomorrow’s schedule (link) and I’ll be covering the event live on twitter, by live-tweeting.