Numbers from AppData confirm that the company is right up there, and according to Peak Games itself, the company now has six million daily active users for its own games and 3.7 million for the third-party games it publishes. That means it trumps Berlin’s Wooga (8.6 million DAUs) and even Electronic Arts (9.1 million).

If you’re still asking who Peak Games are, you probably don’t live in Turkey, the Middle East or North Africa (MENA). The Istanbul-based company, which is only a year-and-a-half old, has many highly successful games in the region, such as Tavla Plus and Pyramidville.

Pyramidville? That would be a clone with an Egyptian twist, right?

“It would be a fair assessment,” co-founder and chief strategy officer Rina Onur told me. “Peak Games is both a developer and a publisher. We’re not just focused on creating titles – our main focus is the region. We’re here to provide any type of game for any type of gamer in this region, so we take successful games from around the world and get publishing rights.”

It’s not a bad strategy. 40 percent of Peak’s users are in the MENA region. If the gamers in that part of the world want a version of Farmville with “Arabic-looking people”, as Onur put it, so be it.

MENA in mind

But it’s Peak’s in-house stuff that’s more interesting, particularly its versions of local classic board games such as Okey. The latest self-developed title was Lost Bubble, which already has two million daily active users – the game was launched in 15 different languages, including Turkish and Arabic.

“The number of gamers from this region is going to increase very significantly, which is enough to take us higher in the rankings,” Onur suggested.

But that’s not to say Peak will be relying entirely on the Middle East and North Africa for growth. On the contrary, Onur revealed plans to “replicate what we’ve been doing in this emerging market region and take it to other regions”, namely south-east Asia, “in the upcoming months”.

The company’s bringing two new faces onto its board to help out with the expansion: angel investor Ali Kutay (former CEO of WebLogic and GoldenGate) and Robert Unsworth (a business development guy, formerly at Digital Chocolate).

Interestingly, Peak is staying away from Latin America at the moment, and that’s largely because Facebook – a key platform for the firm, alongside browser and mobile– is only now taking over from Google’s Orkut. Onur and her firm want to wait for that process to play out, then re-evaluate the scene.

“When it happens, then great, but right now we’re not confident we’d see the user levels or the monetization levels we’re seeing in our market,” she said.

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While on average nearly one-in-five (17 percent) wired workers claims to telecommute on a frequent basis, the percentage of workers taking advantage of their broadband connection to get out of the office was far higher in emerging markets.

“Those working in the Middle East and Africa (27 percent), Latin America (25 percent) and Asia-Pacific (24 percent) are considerably more likely than those in North America (9 percent) and Europe (9 percent) to telecommute ‘on a frequent basis,’” the survey found. The rates for individual countries hold more surprises with these nations reporting the most and fewest telecommuters:

• India: 56 percent
• Indonesia: 34 percent
• Mexico: 30 percent
• Argentina: 29 percent
• South Africa: 28 percent
• Turkey: 27 percent
• Canada: 8 percent
• France: 7 percent
• Italy: 7 percent
• Sweden: 6 percent
• Germany: 5 percent
• Hungary: 3 percent

So who exactly qualifies as a frequent telecommuter for the purposes of the Ipsos survey? A telecommuter, the release explains is “an employee uses a stationary or portable computer to do their office work from a location outside of their office,” so a fairly standard definition that encompasses how the word is commonly used here in the States.

The survey also found differences between populations in how much appetite for telecommuting exists among those who have not yet been offered the option. In Japan, a measly 12 percent would telecommute if given the opportunity. Sixteen percent in Sweden and 19 percent in Great Britain felt the same, while a whopping 54 percent of Argentines would happily jump on the telecommuting bandwagon if allowed.

One thing healthy majorities in nearly every country agreed on though was that telecommuting is a productivity booster. Sixty-five percent globally told pollsters “telecommuters are more productive because the flexibility allows them to work when they have the most focus and/or because having maximum control over the work environment and schedule leads to job satisfaction and happiness.” Surprisingly, in telecommuting-bereft Hungary, 74 percent agreed with this proposition, as did a similar proportion of those polled in Argentina, Poland, India, Indonesia, Mexico and Saudi Arabia.

What do you think accounts for the national differences revealed by the survey?

Image courtesy of Flickr user diongillard.

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During the month of October, Apple iPhone accounted for 29.6 percent of traffic from mobile devices, with the iPad accounting for 24.1 percent. The iPod touch added another two percent to the total for Apple devices. Apple’s iPhone was the most popular device overall, and the iPad second. RIM’s BlackBerry devices came in third, with 7.6 percent combined.

Broken down by country, Apple’s lead is even stronger in some places. In Saudi Arabia, for instance, 64.5 percent of mobile Internet traffic occurred on Apple devices, with the iPhone accounting for 34.3 percent. In Egypt, Jordan and the UAE, the iPad was the most popular device overall, accounting for 28.7, 24.7 and 18.8 percent of mobile traffic, respectively.

Effective Measure’s measured audience for the Middle East-North Africa region is 43.7 million spread across sixteen countries. For Apple to own such an impressive share of the market in an area where BlackBerry has traditionally been in high demand is an impressive achievement.

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Since launching her flash sales service and fashion brand less than 18 months ago, Mutlu has rapidly become known not just as one of the country’s top female entrepreneurs, but one of its top entrepreneurs full stop — a reputation that will only be underscored by the official announcement that the company has closed a $26 million round of funding from Tiger Global (LinkedIn, Zynga) and perhaps more importantly Silicon Valley royalty Kleiner Perkins.

The site — its name means “become a trendy person” in Turkish — is centered on the increasingly familiar model of flash sales: customers sign up to get access to sales where the latest fashions are available at heavily discounted prices.

“We are similar in our business model to Vente Privee and Gilt Groupe,” admits Mutlu, “But we’re not just a discount site.”

So how is it different? Well, it’s a highly social business with a focus on customer service — which it achieves mainly through being deeply embedded in conversations with users and trying to be as reactive as possible to their needs and desires. For example, the company uses its Facebook page (which has 500,000 fans) as a customer service tool; they’ve built a full end-to-end shopping service that means users can browse and order goods without ever leaving the social network.

At the same time, the company regularly uses the page to ask users what sort of celebrity photo shoots they want to see next, and gauge what styles they are interested in.

But the most significant difference, she suggests, is that Trendyol also runs its own fashion label, Milla — which happens to be the fastest growing portion of its business. All of this has helped the business expand rapidly since launching early in 2010, to the point where it now has 4 million users and $100 million in revenues. It appears to have really struck a cord with people and tapped into a user base that others had struggled to hit.

“Turkey’s a very interesting market, and not just because of the population of 80 million people,” she says. “The infrastructure’s there… “

Plus there’s a lot of emphasis on fashion among the increasingly young population, who see brands and style as a hugely important status symbol. That makes it an attractive investment for a company like Kleiner Perkins, which doesn’t often make significant deals outside the U.S.

“But it’s not just about the market, it’s about the company too — the culture, the DNA,” says Mutlu. “We have really top talent that we have brought in; two ex-Amazonians, the former CEO of Reader’s Digest here in Turkey, a lot of well-educated managers, and many expats.”

As well as relying on her own experiences gathered at NYU, Harvard Business School and major firms like Procter & Gamble, she says it’s been important to bring in a lot of other experienced hands. It’s not easy, though, because Turkey’s culture prizes a certain sort of success that means the potential cohort of startup entrepreneurs have largely been wooed into well-paying corporate roles around the world.

“People who had my background in Turkey just wouldn’t have done this,” she says. “In the past, entrepreneurship was seen as something you do if you can’t get a job with a multinational.”

So what next? News of a deal with Kleiner Perkins and Tiger had been bubbling for a while, but now that it is fully public, Mutlu says the company plans to use the money to grow inside Turkey — though through organic growth, not acquisition — and then take the show on the road. Early targets include other countries around the Middle East and North Africa, particularly Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

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“This might be the golden age for natural gas,” Birol said at the World Future Energy Summit, a conference organized by Abu Dhabi to position itself as a key player in a global shift toward renewable energy. “Natural gas might penetrate the market at a higher rate than any of us has anticipated. If natural gas market continues to follow its path, then life for renewable energy may be tougher than we think.”

Global demand for natural gas is set to rise by 44 percent by 2035, with China and the Middle East driving the bulk of the demand, Birol said. Supply of what he called “unconventional gas,” which refers to gas that isn’t easily pumped (such as natural gas from shale formation), will likely account for 35 percent of the global supply by 2035, he added.

The U.S. and Canada have seen a surge in producing shale gas in recent years, but new supplier countries will surely emerge in the coming decades, he said. Abu Dhabi also announced Thursday that its oil company has selected Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum as a partner for a $10 billion plan to extract what’s called sour gas in the emirate. Sour gas contains high concentration of hydrogen sulfide and is difficult and dangerous to extract.

Middle East is one of the regions that will help to drive the 36 percent jump in the global energy demand by 2035. Not surprisingly, China will lead the pack for more energy.

The abundance of natural gas in the marketplace now has given it a new persona as a somewhat eco-friendly form of fossil fuel. Burning natural gas to produce electricity emits about half of the carbon dioxide emissions as burning coal. But let’s not forget that natural gas is still a type of fossil fuel.

The abundance of the gas supply means it’s cheap – so cheap that even natural gas evangelist T. Boone Pickens doesn’t consider it a profitable investment. That has caused a glut in the market, Birol said. The “gas glut will peak soon, but it may dissipate only very slowly,” he added.

Still, IEA is bullish that renewable energy will widen its market share because many governments claim they are committed to adopting policies to reduce carbon emissions. Renewable energy consumption, including hydropower will likely triple between 2008 and 2035, and most of that energy will take the form of electricity. Renewable energy’s share of the electricity supply is predicted to grow to 32 percent in 2035 from 19 percent in 2008, the IEA said.

Some have argued that natural gas, no matter its abundance or pricing, will not have a huge impact in areas that have policies that mandate a growing use of renewable electricity. For example, in the U.S., some states require their utilities to increase their purchase of renewable electricity. At the same time, some renewable energy investors say a lack of national policy to address climate change by the U.S. has dampened investments in renewable energy.

Alex O’Cinneide, director of Abu Dhabi’s cleantech investment arm called Masdar Capital, said China has become an attractive hunting ground for investors because the country has strong policies and capital commitments to bolster renewable energy development. A fund Masdar raised jointly with Deutsche Bank recently invested $50 million in a Chinese wind company.

“Western investors, if you have companies in Silicon Valley and you try to find a market there, you will see there is no (government) support,” O’Cinneide said during a panel discussion at the conference.

Disclaimer: Abu Dhabi government paid for my flight and lodging for the conference.

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Lorica also notes in his post that, with a market penetration of just 1.7 percent in Asia and Africa, Facebook “has barely scratched the surface in both regions.” In a similar post last fall, the O’Reilly researcher said that in the prior three months, Asia had added more than 17 million users. Meanwhile, the share of users from the Middle East/North Africa region remains stable at just over 8 percent, he says, and had “the second fastest-growth rate over the past 12 weeks,” according to his research data. Lorica also says that the number of users who are in the 18-25 age group is higher outside the U.S., particularly in Asia, the Middle East/North Africa, Africa and South America.

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Financial terms of First Solar’s contract with Masdar, Abu Dhabi’s cleantech development arm, were not disclosed, but the Arizona-based company is selling the city just half of the panels that will make up a larger 10 MW solar power plant. The rest of the panels will be provided by a yet-to-be-named traditional crystalline solar panel provider. Compared to First Solar’s deals with SolarCity and juwi solar, the project is small peanuts in terms of size, but it will be high profile. Eventually it will power the Masdar Institute, a university being developed by Masdar with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which aims to position Masdar City as the Silicon Valley of the Middle East — with a strong focus on renewable energy.

Construction has already started on the solar power plant, which is expected to be up and running by the end of the second quarter of this year.

Masdar isn’t just financing projects locally, it’s setting up its own solar photovoltaic manufacturing company in Germany, and it has already made a number of investments in other technologies, including taking a 20 percent stake in the UK’s London Array offshore wind farm.

The economic woes that are affecting companies and projects around the world don’t seem to be slowing things down at Masdar. The days of dependable and relatively cheap oil may be numbered, but the group has plenty of money to spend today, and it is likely to be the source of a lot of financing for cleantech companies for years to come.

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