Executive Summary
Summary of It’s key industry forecasts, views and trend analysis covering Information technology, regulatory changes, major investments and projects, and significant multinational and national company developments.
Regional Overview
Cross-border analysis of regional markets, commenting on IT penetration (PC and internet) and market growth drivers (IT market size and IT market compound growth).
Market Overview
Structure, size and value of industry sector; overview of industry landscape and key players; assessment of business operating environment and latest regulatory developments.
It 5-Year Industry Forecast
Historic data series and 5-year forecasts to end-2012 for all key industry indicators (see list below), supported by explicit assumptions, plus analysis of key downside risks to the main forecast.
IT industry value (US$bn); IT sector contribution to GDP (%); value of hardware, software and services industry (US$mn); PC, peripherals and software imports and exports (US$mn); PC, peripherals and software sales (US$mn); number of PCs (‘000); PCs/ 100 inhabitants; internet users (‘000); internet users per 100 inhabitants; broadband subscribers (‘000); broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants.
It 5-Year Macroeconomic Forecast
It forecasts for all headline macroeconomic indicators, including real GDP growth, inflation, fiscal balance, trade balance, current account and external debt.
Competitive Landscape & Profiles
Company profiles, including SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analyses, business activity, leading products and services.
Executive Summary
Saudi Arabia’s computer market demonstrated strong growth in Q107 driven by falling prices and growing demand for notebooks. For many vendors Saudi is clearly the most important market in the region and most recorded significant sales growth in 2006. Overall, the value of the Saudi Arabian IT market is estimated to have reached US$2.5bn in 2006 and is expected to rise to US$3.9bn by 2011, representing a CAGR of 9%. High oil prices have been stimulating increased spending on IT products and services by government as well as in sectors such as manufacturing and transport. Going forward, telecommunications liberalisation, a push for broadband, and government spending programmes on IT in Education and other areas should reinforce the potential of the market. The government has recently announced some US$32bn of infrastructure projects in Riyadh area, including construction of an Information Technology park. Although some distributors are tipping Egypt to overtake Saudi Arabia this year in terms of computer sales, a number of factors should mean continued strong momentum for the Saudi Arabian IT market. Strong growth in sales of both computers and associated services is being driven by high oil prices and substantial budgets allocated for e-government infrastructure development.
In the enterprise sector, smaller companies are realising the opportunities to apply IT to achieve efficiencies in such areas as finance and logistics as well as marketing and other functions.
The context is a business environment that is becoming increasingly competitive and open, as the country became a membership. Particularly significant is the planned further liberalisation of the telecoms sector, with new fixed-line and mobile licences expected to be awarded in 2007. In terms of PC and notebook sales, the market was the largest in the region in volume sales in 2006, but in the past year demand for IT services, including outsourcing, has also shown a strong growth trend. A growing number of companies in the telecoms and other sectors are looking to contract-out functions that they previously kept in-house.
With annual per-capita expenditure on IT reaching US$330, and Saudi Arabia continuing to account for around 40% of IT spending in the Middle East region in 2006, the market looms large in the regional calculations of multinational IT companies. Youthful population demographics, a regional economic boom fuelled by high oil prices and a buoyant real estate sector, and specific factors such as the growing popularity of e-banking will all drive growth.
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