JEDDAH, 7 April — COMDEX Saudi Arabia closed Thursday night and since then everybody has been asking me, “How was it?” The truth is that there were some things that were better than in previous two years and other things that weren’t as good.
The crowd control was much improved. Registration and entry into the event was smooth, even during the peak evening hours. The show stayed open later at night than last year and this was appreciated by all. More women came out to COMDEX, especially on Thursday evening when relatives were available to accompany them. According to exhibitors, the quality of the attendees was better than in previous years. Many visitors actually knew which technologies they were interested in and could ask intelligent questions.
The event was not without its downside. It was a smaller show than last year, mostly due to some exhibitors deciding to participate in the upcoming GITEX show in Riyadh. I still believe that the Riyadh show is damaging to the Saudi market. Many COMDEX visitors told me that they would not be attending the show in Riyadh. Some of the COMDEX exhibitors will not be participating at GITEX. This will cause a split in the market and weaken the local IT industry.
COMDEX was here first. They were investing in the show and have improved its management year after year. It is a very inclusive exhibition. It has been particularly heartening to see that women have been welcome at all times and in every aspect of the exhibition, from the demos on the show floor to the seminars. I wrote back in July 2001 that GITEX should never have been granted an exhibition license. GITEX’s canceling of their Cairo show this year should send an ominous warning about their commitment to any market outside Dubai. To protect and strengthen the Saudi market, the minister of commerce should step in and control the exhibition schedule in the Kingdom. Two major IT shows in one month in Saudi Arabia is ludicrous.
However, I do believe that COMDEX would have been better this year if some of the exhibitors had analyzed this market a little more before coming to the show. A few of the exhibitors brought technology that they have no intention of selling in the Kingdom. Modern Electronics did this with their Aibo Entertainment Robot. Visitors to the show were very interested in Aibo but they were clearly advised that after-sales support wasn’t available in the Kingdom so the robotic pooch would never be theirs. Such a policy was not a crowd pleaser. I noticed that the commitment of the exhibitors to the show varied. Some exhibitors never cared to come on time, often missing the morning hours all together. Other companies sent staff to COMDEX who were not fully advised on the technologies they were promoting or who viewed the show as a vacation. Too many young exhibitors sat in their chairs chatting with each other, rather than actively encouraging visitors to “come and have a look” at the technology they were featuring. Faisal Al-Monaiey from ZFPIT gets my vote as the best rep at COMDEX. He came early and stayed late. He spoke with everyone who passed by. I even saw him go over and greet visitors who were at other stands and ask them to come and see him for a demo. Zuhair Fayez owes him a raise and everyone else should try to hire him.
The public relations companies were another group that I wasn’t very happy with. PR companies were very slow about getting their client material out this year. Before COMDEX, just two PR companies contacted me. That doesn’t bode well for coverage and it meant that the IT companies had to organize their own impromptu PR. I was hijacked by some IT companies on the show floor. Redha Abed of GraphiTech had a great product and he worked hard to sell me on it. There’s a joke at IT trade shows about all the visitors who are less than IT-aware and ask software companies, “How much is this screen?” Fortunately for Abed that’s exactly the question he wanted everyone to ask because he was promoting the screen.
Abed was introducing Wacom’s Cintiq to the market. Wacom is already known for its graphics tablets that use pen and mouse to turn on the power of Photoshop’s pressure-sensitive tools. Cintiq combines the advantages of a LCD monitor with the control, comfort and productivity of a Wacom tablet. The LCD monitor is clear, bright and easy to look at. The Cintiq pen has 512 levels of pressure-sensitivity, is cordless, and batteryless and includes both a DuoSwitch and a pressure-sensitive eraser. The Cintiq pen is used directly on the screen offering everyone from designers and illustrators to doctors and professors a powerful and intuitive new way to work on their computers.
The Cintiq LCD monitor is a true-color active matrix screen providing 16.7 million colors, a resolution of 1024 x 768 and a full 15” diagonal viewing area (the equivalent of a 17” CRT monitor). The Cintiq stand allows the user to easily adjust the angle of the Cintiq screen between 18 and 73 degrees — the stand can even be removed and the Cintiq rested in the user’s lap.
The Canadian Pavilion was the location of another great product. First of all though, I must congratulate the Canadians as having the best national presence at COMDEX. Nineteen companies participated at the Canadian Pavilion. In 2001, total Canadian exports to KSA were 326.333 Canadian dollars and total Canadian imports from KSA were 778.200 Canadian dollars. The Canadians are hoping to improve their balance of trade with the Kingdom and they feel that they have much to offer in the area of IT. John M. Khalife, Commercial Officer, Canadian Embassy, stated that Canada has established leading positions in specialized markets such as graphics, multimedia, business intelligence, learnware, Internet tools, e-commerce, e-government and software for the wireless world.
Khalife introduced me to a Canadian company, Xplore Technologies (xploretech.com) that had brought to COMDEX products which would have practical use, especially in the harsh environments found in the Kingdom’s petroleum and petrochemical industries and other manufacturing settings. Xploretech is a leader in the rugged pen-based mobile wireless computing industry. John Ishak, Xplore Technologies VP, Engineering and Manufacturing, demonstrated the company’s GeneSys II which is a fully functional tablet computer in a sealed enclosure. This ruggedized computer can be smashed to the floor, taken out in a sandstorm, dropped in a water puddle or exposed to heat up to 70 degrees C, and it will still work. It brings computing into areas that were never accessible before because typical laptops are too fragile.
While there was lots of new hardware on display at COMDEX, software and solutions were important too. IBM/SBM and Microsoft had been main sponsors of the show. Microsoft was supported by a dozen partners. Muhammad Iftekhar, marketing and business development manager at MS partner National Computer Services Center (NCSC), put forward his thoughts on what his company could offer to Saudi businesses.
“In this age of information technology, efficient communication at greater speed and at lower costs is the name of the game,” said Iftekhar. “The government of Saudi Arabia is taking serious steps to enhance the communications infrastructure but it will take some time to reap the benefits of these upgrades. Growing companies, with multiple offices in different locations throughout Saudi Arabia, currently face a real challenge in centralizing their business information. Till recently the only options available were either inefficient or very expensive and required high bandwidth. NCSC and Al-Musbah Trading Group participating at COMDEX as a Microsoft Great Plains Business Solutions Partner have solutions to offer which address these issues.”
He continued, “Microsoft Great Plains ERP solution can be deployed centrally at a company’s head office. Then the company’s branches and the showrooms in different locations can access the system through their browsers at the speed of a LAN as if they are working at the head office. This solution is made possible by Citrix Metaframe XP technology, which offers the ability to deliver any application to any device over any connection whether it is normal dial-up lines or via Internet (VPN). It allows users to access their information wherever they are.”
Today’s COMDEX report would not be complete without a word about the Palestinian presence or rather, lack of it, at the exhibition. Sadiq Tawfiq did his best to represent the Palestinian IT community but he admitted that it was a struggle and he was certain that they had lost an enormous opportunity by not having their full staff at the show. Due to the extreme violence, the Palestinian IT representatives had been unable to leave the territories to attend COMDEX. The Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry has promised to sponsor their visit to the Kingdom the moment they can travel. Unfortunately that visit does not seem imminent. Thursday night as COMDEX was closing, it was announced that the heads of the Palestinian IT companies Babil Soft and Noursoft had been taken into custody in random arrests. Please pray for our Palestinian brothers and sisters at this difficult time.
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