The most recent figures from Yango Group contain a tiny, revealing detail. Yasmina, the typical Arabic-English voice assistant user, spoke to the device twenty-two times a day in the fourth quarter of 2025. That figure increased to forty-four on busy days. That isn’t how someone using a smart speaker to run a single errand would behave. That is a household member’s rhythm.
According to Yango’s data, which was made public this month, Yasmina’s daily active users increased sixfold over the same quarter last year. The overall number of interactions increased by over five times. These kinds of numbers are simple to skim in a press release, but they point to something more intriguing than growth. They imply habit. The kind of habit that develops without anyone noticing.
These gadgets can be found on shelves between framed pictures and Quranic copies if you walk into a living room in Sharjah or Muscat. The lineup, which includes Yasmina Lite, Mini, Midi, and Max, resembles a coffee menu, which is most likely the intention. The speakers are available at Virgin Megastore, Carrefour, Noon, and Amazon.ae. It is widely available, reasonably priced, and simple to ignore until someone asks it to play a Surah or set the Adhan for Fajr.
Silicon Valley consistently lacks that blend. Arabic is the primary language used by 60% of Yasmina’s daily users in the United Arab Emirates. Twelve percent more people switch between Arabic and English in the middle of sentences; Alexa and Google Assistant have notoriously had trouble with code-switching. Twenty-eight percent continue to speak English. With Arabic and English already blending together at the dinner table, it is difficult to ignore how skillfully the device has blended into the linguistic fabric of Gulf life.
In a sense, the analysis of what people genuinely ask is a miniature ethnography. Open dialogue, which includes chatting, asking questions, and passing the time, accounts for 45% of interactions in Arabic. Twenty-two percent of them involve playing something, such as radio, fairy tales, audiobooks, or music. Seven percent have a religious bent. The pattern changes in English. Content playback increases to thirty-two percent, general conversation falls to thirty-four percent, and a new category—time management—emerges in third. timers, reminders, and alarms. In essence, the English-speaking Yasmina is a productivity assistant. The version that speaks Arabic is more akin to a companion.
Outside of the area, Yango isn’t exactly well-known. The company started out as a Russian tech company and has been stealthily expanding its services throughout the Middle East and parts of Africa for the past few years. These services include ride-hailing, maps, delivery, advertising, and now AI. It supports over a million drivers and has enabled over 630 million rides worldwide. It partnered with the Ministry of Technology to upgrade the local taxi platform Otaxi in Oman. Yango seems to be playing a longer game than its Western rivals, focusing more on integrating itself into a region’s regular infrastructure than on flagship launches.
It remains to be seen if Yasmina has this advantage. The GCC is a market that Apple, Google, and Amazon cannot afford to continue losing, and they have all made statements about improved Arabic support. However, the head start is important. Once established, habits are difficult to break. For the twenty-third time today, a child in Abu Dhabi is currently requesting that Yasmina read her an Arabic bedtime story.
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