The cost of a smartphone in Saudi Arabia has declined rapidly in recent years. The arrival of affordable brands such as China’s InnJoo, which entered the market in late 2014 with a model priced at SR299 ($79.70), has made smartphone technology more accessible than ever. In July 2017 another Chinese firm, Huawei, pushed the iPhone into third...
The GCC region, with its high disposable incomes, saturated mobile telephony markets, rapidly increasing smartphone penetration and young populations, has all the necessary ingredients for an e-commerce boom. Estimates as to the size of the region’s e-commerce market and its potential growth trajectory vary, but a comprehensive study carried...
One of the effects of the current low-oil price environment has been a return of the concept of Saudiisation to the top of the economic agenda – a development which has had significant impacts on the telecoms sector. In 2016 the Kingdom introduced its latest iteration of the nitaqat framework, a system that evaluates companies on their...
Rapidly expanding technology firms have become some of the most sought after targets in the global investment arena, and Saudi Arabian entities have played a prominent part in this trend. The emergence of Careem, a rival to Uber in the Middle East, is a prime example of how young tech operations in the region are attracting significant amounts...
Accounting for 6% of GDP and 10% of non-oil GDP in 2016, according to the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC), Saudi Arabia’s ICT sector plays an important part in the Kingdom’s economy. Spending in the sector exceeded SR130bn ($34.7bn) in 2016, and in 2017 it was expected to have reached SR138bn ($36.8bn) despite...
Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 strategy establishes ICT as a central pillar of the Kingdom’s future development. A number of Saudi ministries have been actively pursuing an ICT agenda for some years, and this work is set to accelerate as they strive to meet the shorter-term objectives recently defined by the National Transformation Programme (NTP...
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