Based on years of deep cultivation and insight in overseas regions, Agora talks about the Middle East market from multiple perspectives such as macroeconomic demographics, application markets, and scenario gameplay.
Saudi Arabia and Turkey are the main countries in the Middle East, and there is a large difference in per capita GDP between countries
In terms of total GDP, Saudi Arabia and Turkey are the most important countries in the Middle East, while Egypt and Turkey are the most populous countries. The per capita GDP difference between Middle Eastern countries is relatively large, with Saudi Arabia about 30,000 US dollars, Israel and the United Arab Emirates more than 50,000 US dollars, and Turkey, Egypt and Iraq are low.
The Middle East has a high proportion of young people and an imbalanced gender ratio
Looking at the three major countries in the Middle East, the UAE has a serious imbalance in the gender ratio, with 69.4% of men and 57.6% of Saudi Arabia's men, and Turkey has a basically balanced gender ratio, with more men than women in the 34-year-olds in all three countries. The overall age structure is young, with a median age of 30.5 years in Saudi Arabia, 30.3 years in the United Arab Emirates, and 31.8 years in Turkey. The imbalanced gender ratio and young population have led to a strong demand for online social networking in the Middle East.
The Middle East has a high RTC penetration rate and RTC minutes
India, some Middle Eastern, and Southeast Asian countries all have relatively high RTC penetration rates, and pan-entertainment has become more mature in these regions, and users have better habits of using audio and video entertainment apps. However, based on the data of Agora and the total Internet time in various regions, there is still a lot of room for growth in audio and video going overseas.
Pan-entertainment application revenue is concentrated in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and other countries
From the perspective of pan-entertainment application revenue, it is mainly concentrated in Saudi Arabia (40%), Turkey (16%), the United Arab Emirates (11%), Israel (9%), and Kuwait (7%). Downloads were mainly concentrated in Turkey (21%), Egypt (20%), Iraq (12%), Saudi Arabia (12%), and Morocco (7%).
Iraq, the United Arab Emirates and Turkey are growing rapidly
In 2023, Iraq is the fastest-growing country in the Middle East in terms of pan-entertainment app revenue (+76.8% YoY), while other major revenue countries also grew by more than 20%, with revenue from Kuwait -11.4% YoY. Yemen, Oman, Bahrain, and Qatar are the four countries with the fastest year-over-year growth in downloads.
In terms of revenue per download, Kuwait and Israel have the highest revenue
Judging from the total revenue/total download ratio of pan-entertainment apps in various countries in the Middle East in 2023, Kuwait is higher than $2/time, and Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain are above $1. Algeria, Iraq, Morocco, Egypt, and Yemen have a low revenue of less than $0.1 per download, which can be placed based on the cost of customer acquisition.
Chat and live streaming are a thing of the past, and 1v1 gameplay is quickly becoming popular?
As we all know, the chat room is the hottest audio social scene in the Middle East, and the coverage rate of Agora has reached 75% in the top 20 chat scenarios.
In addition to the chat room, the download and revenue volume of other video scenarios in the Middle East is also relatively large. In 2023, dating and 1v1 audio and video scenarios will have the highest growth rate, often adopting the mode of paying to start chatting, and the monetization is relatively fast, becoming a popular scene for social networking to go overseas.
In the process of helping customers go overseas, Agora has also found that there are more and more customers who go overseas for 1v1 social networking in the Middle East, and Agora has also become the first choice for audio and video services for social apps in the Middle East. According to the data, the penetration rate of Agora 1v1 social customers in the 1v1 App market in various regions of the world > 70%, of which in the Middle East, among the top 20 1v1 social apps in the Middle East, 14 apps using Agora SDK have reached 14, ranking first in terms of penetration rate.
WhyAgora Network: Ultra-low latency, stable transmission, high-definition image quality outperform the overseas market
The complex and ever-changing network environment in the Middle East is a challenge to ensure that the vast majority of users can interact smoothly and stably in real-time under any circumstances. Through high-quality network coverage and super weak network confrontation capabilities, Agora effectively solves the interconnection difficulties under network complexity, and "escorts" pan-entertainment social applications in the Middle East. For several popular countries and regions in the Middle East, such as Turkey, Egypt, and Iraq, Agora can also achieve the best effect when the bandwidth is average, the network stability is average or even poor.
Agora has reached the same level of high-quality network coverage in the Middle East as North America and Europe, and the latency is as low as 200ms in 98% of the cases. Generally speaking, the E2E metric of end-to-end experience is related to local network conditions, poor network infrastructure usually leads to high packet loss, and users' intuitive feeling is that the latency is high and the video cannot be swiped. In addition to providing high-quality backbone network transmission services, Agora also needs to ensure the end-to-end experience of the last mile. The last-mile experience is like online shopping, where the seller's inter-provincial logistics is fast after delivery, but it cannot be delivered in the same city, which is also unacceptable. Combined with the customer's business scenario requirements, Agora conducts in-depth optimization, and the latency of the E2E indicator in the Middle East can be less than 400ms in 95% of cases.
Globally, in chat scenarios, Agora can provide end-to-end audio transmission services with ultra-low latency as low as 144ms, and in weak network environments, Agora has a MOS score of 4.42, which is significantly ahead of the industry level. For live broadcast scenarios, the solution provided by Agora has a 200ms video freeze rate as low as 2% and a stable HD video frame rate under a weak network, continuously ensuring high-quality live broadcast image quality. In addition, Agora can provide the world's ultimate first-frame image output without weak network image generation time