"Saudi Arabia is one of the major countries both in market size and in the terms of the vision we have of establishing ourselves in the Middle East," said Aysegul Ildeniz, Intel's recently appointed regional director for the Middle East.
"Saudi Arabia is one of the top four most important countries in the region I am responsible for," said Ildeniz, who is on her first visit to the Kingdom, SPA reported.
"Half the population under 22 means that in the coming 10 or 15 years, any investment Intel makes in developing the IT sector in this country will be coming back as return on investment," she told Arab News.
The Saudi IT market is going to be close to $2.5 billion. "That is a sizeable market," she said, "and 60 percent of that is on hardware."
The highest selling area in Saudi Arabia is laptops, with a market share of nearly 20 percent compared with the average 5 percent in emerging markets, suggesting that people are interested in IT, embracing it and are willing to pay for the new technology.
PC penetration in the Kingdom is still low. Out of 20 million people Ildeniz estimates there are only 1.5 to two million PCs installed. (menareport.com)
© 2004 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
