This was announced at a joint press conference held on the sidelines of the Sixth Global Competitiveness Forum in Riyadh.
Abdulaziz Al-Mutairi, chief executive officer (CEO) of The Centennial Fund; Fahd Hamidaddin, chief of marketing and competitiveness initiatives of SAGIA; Patrick Spence,managing director for global sales and regional marketing, RIM; and Sandeep Saihgal, managing director of Middle East, RIM, attended the press conference.
Expressing SAGIA's commitment to form The BlackBerry Entrepreneurship Academy, Fahd Hamidaddin said the agreement demonstrates SAGIA’s commitment to support "digital entrepreneurship" and further the development of the mobile application industry in the Kingdom.
“We see an increasing demand in this region for localized applications and mobile content and this is creating an opportunity for enterprising software developers,” Hamidaddin said, adding that the programs under the BlackBerry Entrepreneurship Academy will significantly increase the number of applications available in Saudi Arabia, the Middle East region and globally, and enable new skills and more job opportunities in the Kingdom.
The BlackBerry Entrepreneurship Academy, is to be funded by SAGIA and its sister institutions, Cadre and The Centennial Fund.
The primary objectives of the project is to accelerate the growth of mobile app development in the Kingdom and support and foster the growth of local software developers and "digital entrepreneurs" in the Saudi economy.
It would also help create localized mobile apps and content for end-users on the BlackBerry platform
Through the academy, RIM will provide training workshops, a support team and consultation to help entrepreneurial Saudi developers with the commercial and technical aspects of developing mobile applications and content.
Regionally, RIM supports developers through its BlackBerry Alliance Program, providing Alliance members with the necessary tools and know-how to visualize, build and market BlackBerry applications.
“We are very honored to be working with SAGIA to launch the BlackBerry Entrepreneurship Academy in the Middle East,” Sandeep Saihgal said, pointing out that the proposed academy is intended to give Saudi developers access to RIM’s in-house team of developers, who will provide support to Saudi developers for getting their apps to market and into BlackBerry App World.
Locally developed apps will benefit Saudi consumers by bringing locally relevant entertainment, productivity, community service and utility apps directly to their BlackBerry smartphone,Saihgal noted
“BlackBerry smartphones and the BlackBerry® PlayBook tablet are popular in the Kingdom. In fact, Saihgal said the business is more than doubled in size last year in the Middle East, and 99 percent of BlackBerry customers in the Kingdom now use BBM™ (BlackBerry® Messenger), which is among the highest in its global footprint.”
RIM has also provided 1,500 BlackBerry PlayBook tablets to GCF delegates this year.
