JEDDAH, 6 May 2003 — Saudi Arabia is the leading market for information technology in the Gulf and North Africa, accounting for more than a third of the amount spent across the region and more than double the amount spent by all the other GCC countries put together.
Industry analysts separate the IT market into three segments: IT services, computer hardware and computer software. While the IT market has slowed down in the US and Europe since 2000, mainly due to the completion of work related to the millennium bug and the collapse of the dotcom bubble, IT spending in Saudi Arabia for the year 2001, by contrast, showed a 15 percent increase over the previous year.
The most significant part of this increase was due to the growth in servers and LAN hardware as companies and government departments continued to update their IT architecture and infrastructure. But spending on hardware peripherals also increased, buoyed by strong sales of printers, which recorded a 31 percent increase in shipments to the Kingdom.
“The computer hardware market has continued to increase at a healthy rate since 2001 in both units sold and value terms,” industry spokesperson Muhammad Al-Agil, chief executive officer of Jarir Marketing, told Arab News.
“A positive trend in the market is the strong demand for data communications hardware by corporate customers. Further development of the Internet in the region along with an increased acceptance of e-commerce as an effective business tool will ensure continued growth,” he added.
Microsoft, the world’s leading software developer, acknowledged Saudi Arabia as the biggest market in the GCC and North Africa
“The enormous growth potential of the Kingdom’s IT infrastructure and the resulting demand for software by the government, commercial and domestic sectors is the reason why Microsoft established a permanent presence in Saudi Arabia,” said Bilal Sununu, country manager of Microsoft Arabia.
Forecasts for the development of computer hardware sales in the Kingdom, based on 2001 price levels, estimate that the total sales figure for 2004 will be SR 3,260 million, rising to a figure of SR 4,590 million for the year 2006.
