RIYADH, 6 May 2003 — The IT trade show and shopper, GITEX Saudi Arabia 2003, was held in Riyadh from April 27-May 1. That’s the best thing I can say about the event — it was held. Lately, with the instability in the region most major events in Saudi Arabia have been canceled, so actually moving forward with GITEX was an achievement.
GITEX Saudi Arabia was organized by the Riyadh Exhibition Company (REC), Riyadh’s Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Dubai World Trade Center. Pre-show publicity put out by REC stated that GITEX Saudi Arabia is “the most important show of its kind in the Middle East and Gulf region.” I wish that were true. Saudi Arabia is the big gorilla in the Middle East’s ICT market. Unfortunately, everything about GITEX Saudi Arabia was just totally bananas, especially when compared with GITEX Dubai.
There are many reasons for the poor comparison. I was overwhelmed with complaints from GITEX KSA exhibitors. Top problems included outdated exhibition facilities, horrible bathrooms and inadequate parking. Sadly, the topic most discussed at GITEX KSA was not which company had the hottest products or the best stand.
To be honest, if I’d never seen a trade show outside of Saudi Arabia, I would have thought that GITEX KSA was an acceptable event. Some companies tried very hard to do their best for the local business community. Hats off to the representatives of Hewlett-Packard, Panasonic, IBM/SBM, LG, ZAI, Toshiba, Canon, Kodak, Sony and Nokia. I noticed that the representatives of all those brands behaved very professionally and gave the market respect. Special mention goes to Jarir Bookstores.
Their stand attracted some of the most unsophisticated visitors to the show. These individuals asked very basic, annoying questions about computer equipment and peripherals. Hearing a women ask a Jarir representative to explain piece by piece every feature of a machine, I immediately said a silent prayer for the poor technician. The Jarir stand was very popular and somehow, through the last day of the show, the Jarir team managed to stay sane and handle their visitors with dignity.
Most everything at GITEX KSA I’d already seen elsewhere. There are a few things I plan to buy though, now that I’ve tried them at the show. USB Flash disks are at the top of my shopping list. I really liked the ones from GENX. They have a USB MP3 Combo Player with Digital voice recorder. This 128 MB capacity three in one device is retailing for SR360. Ion has a four in one USB device similar to GENX that includes a FM radio, but so far I haven’t found it in the local market.
Dicota has a great range of notebook cases and they have just introduced attractive new models targeting women. It’s about time. I was amazed at what it is possible to do with an ink-jet printer these days. Folex Imaging was promoting film for tattoos, transfer paper for self-glowing T-shirts and magnetic paper for stickers. Their magnetic jet film could even be used with a printer to create signage for affixing short term to vehicles.
While some of the bigger stands and brands were at GITEX KSA for product and technology promotion, most of the reps at smaller stands just wanted people to buy their stuff. Some of the stand reps were even selling illegally on the trade show floor. I saw people buying software and I paid SR10 to purchase a copy of the magazine “Wahat Alhaseeb,” or Computer Oasis, a publication of the Computer Club of the Ministry of Education. Sales were supposedly allowed only at the GITEX shopper.
“It was really unprofessional at many of the stands,” said Pete Seda, executive business consultant, newly arrived in the Kingdom.
“I asked some smaller exhibitors for a brochure about their products or technology. When I explained what I wanted, the stand representatives looked at me like I was asking for something that was out of this world. A lot of companies coming to GITEX need to learn how to promote themselves better.”
One big confusion was in the promotional material for the show itself. I never saw a GITEX KSA catalog. There might have been one, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. The Gitex Times, which was the show publication, was available in Arabic. People looking for general exhibition information in English kept picking up copies of the Soroof Times.
This was a publication that was done in a newspaper format to promote the GITEX exhibit of the Saudi company, Soroof International. People flipped through the entire Soroof Publication and were disappointed when they were still uniformed about the overall GITEX show. That wasn’t Soroof’s fault — their purpose was to promote their own solutions and services — which they did well.
Maybe next year the GITEX organizers should contact Soroof for assistance. Soroof was one local company that received good attention at the show. The Saudi Computer Society also achieved their objectives at GITEX KSA.
“For the Saudi Computer Society, GITEX KSA was a fine event,” said Hassan Taher Daoud, secretary general, Saudi Computer Society.
“We have attracted many visitors to the Saudi Computer Society’s stand and we hope our membership, both among professionals and students, will increase. We have a good magazine, “Computer Time,” which is distributed to all members monthly as a part of their membership fee. The magazine package always includes several free offers. For students it costs just SR100 to join the Saudi Computer Society (computer.org.sa) for one year. Membership in the Society is an excellent way for young people to become more informed on technology and the issues surrounding its use and we encourage them to join.”
Gain for the good of all was also the theme at the stand of Madar Research. The Madar Research Journal was launched in Dubai in October 2002 and Abdul Kader Kamli, president and research director, Madar Research Group, claims that the publication has been well received. He hopes that as the Journal becomes more widely known, companies will turn to it for statistics that are on target and research that encompasses the entire Middle East region.
“The Madar Research Journal is subscription based. We accept no advertising. This has helped both local and international businesses and organizations take us seriously,” Kamli said.
“We interview all the major assemblers in this region. We know all major local IT players and we know the Middle Eastern market. We have found that some of the international research firms, such as IDC, are underestimating the ICT market in the Middle East. Depending on such faulty research can have serious negative impacts when it comes to investment by international vendors and planning for future ICT services in the region.”
What does the future hold for GITEX Saudi Arabia? All the organizers are putting out press releases that state this year’s show was a success. The truth is that GITEX Saudi Arabia is a poor cousin to GITEX Dubai. However, in these dismal economic times, plenty of companies are trying to get a piece of the ICT business in the Kingdom and visas to Saudi Arabia are hard to come by. That is why next year there will still be exhibitors willing to pay for a stand at such a dismal event.
But not everyone is keen to remain onboard the GITEX bandwagon. Targeted roadshows hosted in superior facilities are becoming more popular. One was held in Riyadh at Al Faisaliah Hotel in the same week as GITEX. Next week, I’ll tell you about the extremely successful Citrix iForum 2003.
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