ALKHOBAR, 10 February 2004 — Announcements are out from high-tech companies about facilities under construction in the Middle East. Once again however, Saudi Arabia is not the chosen location for those facilities. Although Saudi Arabia is the land of promise when it comes to sales in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is clearly not the country where most vendors are making investments.

Canon Middle East has launched the region’s first photocopier assembly line in Egypt. The 5,000 sq. mt. facility, operated by Canon’s long-established distributor in Egypt, ETCO, will use local skills to assemble analog copiers. The move comes as part of a series of regional market investments from Canon, which opened a subsidiary operation in Dubai in 2001 to serve the Middle East market.

The Cairo-based facility was inaugurated by Akio Ito, vice president, Canon EMEA and president of Canon’s emerging markets business unit (EMBU), who said: “Canon is profoundly committed to the Egyptian market and believes that the establishment of the assembly line will drive depth in the Egyptian value chain and build further strengths to its fast-growing IT sector.”

“This facility is an important step forward for Canon in the Middle East and represents our strong commitment to building our strong links to the region,” said Canon Middle East President Gordon Jones. “We are working in close partnership with ETCO and our other partners in the region to build different opportunities and we have been greatly helped in this by the Egyptian government, with whom we have worked closely to enable this venture.”

The purpose-built assembly line, located in Egypt’s Al-Ubour City, will supply the local market with Canon analog copiers that will be put together by sub-assemblies produced by Canon. The investment made toward the Canon assembly line exceeds 10 million Egyptian pounds, and according to Canon runs in parallel with the Egyptian government’s policy to increase investments in the country that boost the local manufacturing industry and promote the use of Egyptian skills and talent.

In the Gulf, Saudi Arabia lost out to Dubai — again. Dubai Silicon Oasis (DSO) announced a major partner for its planned micro- and optoelectronics technology park — SiNova Semiconductor, an integrated circuit (IC) developer of communications solutions. SiNova caters primarily to the telecommunications sector. In addition to locating its corporate headquarters at the DSO site, SiNova is planning a design hub that will facilitate the sharing of advanced and sub-micron design methodology, design tools, end-to-end design and manufacturing capabilities for wireless, multimedia and mixed-signal processing systems. The company will begin staffing its DSO offices and the design center immediately.

Currently, SiNova is focused on developing digital application-specific integrated circuits (ASIC) and Systems on a Chip (SoC) solutions for wired and wireless communication networks, power-line communication systems, Internet access and global positioning systems (GPS). The semiconductor firm has specifically targeted the Middle East as one of the world’s fastest-growing telecom markets, based on robust wireless and Internet adoption, as well as increased privatization efforts and competition in a number of markets. SiNova will also cater to US, European and Asian clients from its base within DSO.

“Dubai Silicon Oasis is an ideal site for the SiNova IC Design Center based on a host of attributes, including access to regional engineering talent, modern infrastructure and IT markets in the Middle East region and Indian subcontinent as well as the US and Europe. Even the quality of life afforded in Dubai makes DSO the right location for the SiNova headquarters,” said Dr. Mohammad Reza Movahedin, SiNova Semiconductor’s founder and president.

So, while we in Saudi Arabia sit at conferences and forums discussing what ails us, in other nations they are working effectively to pull in investments and create jobs for their young people. A bit sad isn’t it?

If we’re interested, soon we’ll have another opportunity to impress some companies and investors and perhaps convince them that the Kingdom is worth a second look. Comdex Saudi Arabia comes to the Jeddah International Exhibition and Convention Center, March 14-17, 2004. The event has been organized under the patronage of Makkah Governor Prince Abdul Majeed. Comdex is a trade-only event that allows IT professionals an opportunity to meet, discuss and make vital technology decisions with technology specialists.

This business-to-business IT exhibition has strong support from leading multinational firms as well as their Saudi partners and local IT firms, too. According to the co-organizer DIT Events Projects Manager Nasser Diab, Comdex Saudi Arabia 2004 will feature seven sponsors. Main sponsors: Microsoft Arabia and Samsung. Registration sponsor: Saudi Business Machines — IBM. Wireless Internet sponsor: DYN Al-Rushaid Services. Co-sponsor: SPS Kodak. Business/Press Center: Canon. Registration software powered by: Arabian Computer Projects. MediaLive International are co-organizers of the event and are handling the international sales outside the region to enhance the presence of international participants.

“This year at Comdex Saudi Arabia popular features will be repeated and new ones will be launched,” said Diab. “There will be free workshops and conference programs on site. Catalogues will be available on CD. All exhibitors will be able to take advantage of wireless Internet connection throughout WiFi network. Located in the left corner of the show floor will be the Comdex Global Networking Center. This is where the global community of IT buyers and sellers will be able to meet to build and strengthen global partnerships. It will provide business leaders with the ideal setting to network, conduct business expansion and partnership in an undisturbed and professional environment.”

The educational component of the event will feature seven new themes including Wireless and Mobility, Windows Platform, On Demand Computing and Security. Other sessions will be presented by speakers from various nations including the US Department of Commerce from the US Consulate in Jeddah, Canadian Commercial Section of the Canadian Embassy, Korea Association of Information & Telecommunication and Palestine IT Association of Companies. The speakers will be covering important issues concerning the IT sector in their countries and how they serve the IT infrastructure in the Kingdom, plus various investment opportunities.

Now, I must admit that I crept out of Saudi Arabia during the month of Ramadan and spent a day at Comdex Las Vegas 2003, and no I wasn’t a guest of Comdex. In fact, when I first saw the show I hated it. The last time I had been to Comdex was in the year 2000 — a wonderful, happy time for the IT industry. Comdex Las Vegas 2003 was a shock. The show was much smaller. I toured the entire show floor in hours, rather than days. There were none of the bells and whistles and wacky giveaways that I have grown accustomed to from other IT shows. Some of the large IT companies didn’t come. Others chose to exhibit at the Computer Digital Expo across town. That turned out to be a very big mistake for them as nobody went there. The truth is that many companies were barely recovered from the industry crash of the previous couple of years and many were still in wait-and-see mode.

Long a launch pad for consumer items, the Comdex Las Vegas 2003 trade show focused more on technology for the working world, including security, spam and utility computing. Once I got used to the scaled-down look of the show I found that there were many likable things about it. Most importantly, the technology I wanted to see I got to see immediately. There were no long lines because all the non-techies were missing. Even better, with less of a crowd, vendor representatives had time to answer my questions and the noise level on the show floor was reasonable enough that I could actually hear the answers.

Never fear. The show still did have its insane moments. For example, Jeremy Bergen, a 21-year-old information technology manager from Grand Junction, Colorado was named “America’s Fastest Geek” when he won a contest to see who could assemble a personal computer in the least time. Screwdriver at the ready, it took Bergen five minutes, 11 seconds to build the machine.

Comdex has changed, but so has the technology industry as a whole. IT companies now are totally focused on real business and real customers. If Comdex reflects these new trends, then I guess I can live without the hype. I’ll make do with the technology, straight up, if you please.

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(Comments to: baisa@maktoob.com.)