DUBAI, 21 November 2006 — It’s the biggest IT trade event in the region and one of the Top 3 IT exhibitions globally. This year GITEX is definitely trying to prove that more and more exhibitors under one roof results in a better show. Visitors to GITEX are confronted by an exhibition that has grown by 33 percent in sheer size. This has been accomplished by opening new exhibition halls at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre and running Dubai World Trade Centre’s latest exhibition, GULFCOMMS, a telecom focused exhibition, alongside GITEX.

There are 1,347 exhibitors at the show — 129 of those at GULFCOMMS. The Top 10 exhibitors by size include Dubai Internet City (DIC), Etisalat, Sony, Microsoft, Samsung, du, Panasonic, Dubai e-Government, Saudi Telecom (STC) and Sharp. Exhibitors from 76 countries are participating with new exhibitors coming from nations such as Kenya, Uzbekistan and Sudan.

DWTC is expecting 130,000 people to traipse through GITEX and GULFCOMMS. Faced with 14 halls, ballrooms and concourses, packed wall-to-wall with exhibitors, most visitors spend their first few hours at the show just trying to get their bearings. Human traffic jams are common in Halls 2 through 4, where many of the large hardware vendors are located.

“I’ve just arrived and it looks like there’s a lot to see,” said Fahd A. Al-Shaibani, GM of Sky Net Arabia Corporation in Riyadh. “I am on the Internet every day, checking the news about the latest developments in technology. I come to GITEX to see the hardware close-up and try it live, if possible.”

Nezar Muhalhal, manager of Saudi Arabian Airlines Self-Learning and Training Center in Jeddah, was also having a positive show experience.

“I am here to look for new e-learning solutions,” he said. “I used to go to Comdex in Las Vegas but with the collapse of that show and the difficulties traveling after September 11, now GITEX is the place where we meet with many e-learning providers.”

Despite the high number of visitors expected, the mammoth size of the exhibition is forcing exhibitors to try every possible ploy to gain attention. The consumer electronics giants have attractive hostesses running games at their stands. These are extremely popular and the crowds are deep around Sanyo and LG’s locations. Adobe and iMate are keeping to the IT theme, offering well attended tutorials on their stands. Entertainers dressed up as the official brand mascots of some companies roam the exhibition halls. And even when a company doesn’t have a product ready to sell, allowing an “exclusive” peek of that product’s capabilities behind closed doors is sure to have people lining up for a glimpse. That’s exactly what Sony is doing with its PlayStation 3.

There is a concern this year though, that the most desirable GITEX visitors were being siphoned off by companies running events alongside the trade show. IBM and Cisco have invited many of the top IT decision-makers in the region to attend private “summits” located at Mina A’Salam. This means that top executives from the region’s largest enterprises didn’t visit GITEX until yesterday. Numerous exhibitors commented that the quality of the show visitors was more important that increasing numbers of visitors and that DWTC must do more to attract corporate decision-makers rather than just lower level technical staff.

“I have to admit that the visitors at GITEX haven’t been what we expected,” said Khaled A. Aldryaan, corporate sales manager, Al-Khaleej Training and Education, a Jeddah-based company exhibiting at the show. “We have exhibited at GITEX Saudi Arabia, but there we tend to see customers that we are already serving. We were hoping that by exhibiting in Dubai we would be able to demonstrate our education solutions to regional customers. We will make the best of it. We hope that the visitor numbers increase in coming days and then we will certainly follow up after the show with the contacts we make here.”

For more show coverage, don’t miss the special GITEX review in next week’s CompuNet.