Zain, the leading digital service provider in Kuwait, has entered an agreement with DOCOMO Digital, one of the world’s pre-eminent mobile commerce enablers, to develop an exclusive digital content environment called Zain Kids, which is one of the first such platforms of its kind in the region.
Zain Kids has been developed to address concerns of unsupervised access to digital content by children, while still providing the most popular digital content, filtered by age, to children across formats. A tailored mix of local and global content based on the preferences of children in Kuwait will be accessible through Zain Kids.
The latest agreement will allow Zain Kuwait’s 2.8 million users access to content from DOCOMO Digital’s mobile entertainment partners and the ability to pay for this content securely as part of their monthly phone bills, leveraging DOCOMO Digital’s digital marketing expertise and direct carrier billing technology. In addition to full parental controls, Zain Kids will also offer parents with a usage dashboard to monitor the time spent online by children. Zain Kids is accessible both over the web and as an iOS or Android app.
Modhey Al Sabah, Zain Kuwait’s Chief Government Affairs and Business Development Officer said, “Educating and entertaining our children in the digital environment is of extreme importance to us, and hence it is imperative that these young minds are protected from inappropriate content at all costs.”
Al Sabah continued, “At Zain, we take the mental protection of children very seriously, and as broadband access develops to become a widespread need for daily activity, we must make sure it is also a safe and healthy environment in which children can prosper. DOCOMO Digital shares our passion for securing children online, and we are excited to be the first operator in the region to introduce such a protected gaming environment.”
Hiroyuki Sato, CEO of DOCOMO Digital, commented, “Zain Kids offers unique educational content and an engaging environment for children with no compromises on safety, giving parents complete control over the content that is accessed and consumed. We are pleased to see our partnership with Zain Kuwait grow from strength-to-strength, in line with our commitment to expand our footprint across the Middle East.”
With over 98% of children under the age of eight now reported to be living in homes with at least one mobile device, it is not surprising that the “kids & family” category of apps has been downloaded more than 4.4 billion times globally across Google Play and iOS stores in the last 12 months. Parents at the same time are increasingly concerned about what content their children are being exposed to online.
The launch of Zain Kids in Kuwait follows the company-wide agreement signed at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in 2018, between Zain Group and DOCOMO Digital that has seen the successful launch of the Zain Games gaming platform in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Iraq. All these countries will follow Kuwait and offer the Zain Kids content environment in the near future.
