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#! /bin/bash

shopt -s extglob

x=$1
while [ ${#x} -gt 0 ]
do
num=${x%%[a-zA-Z]*}; x=${x##+([0-9])}
str=${x%%[0-9]*}; x=${x##+([a-zA-Z])}
for ((i=1; i<=$num; i++))
do
...

Your code takes 0.02s on my machine!! I'm working on a server having 6 quad core cpu's each clocking 2.4 GHz and running on RHEL.

Try this. I don't claim it to be the most efficient. But still...

@max_hammer: I don't think [ "$x" =~ [0-9] ] would work on bash 3.2 either.

I'm using GNU bash, version 3.2.25 and [ "$x" =~ [0-9] ] doesn't work. Regex matching is not supported by single square...

Try with double brackets.. like this:
if [[ "${ch}" =~ "[0-9]" ]]

$ cat input
3a3b4c
4a5d2c
10a12b14c
3abc4xyz5pqr
$
$ perl -ne 'chomp;print$2x$1while(/(\d+)(\D+)/g);print"\n"' input
aaabbbcccc
aaaadddddcc
aaaaaaaaaabbbbbbbbbbbbcccccccccccccc...