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...
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...
Cybersecurity stands at an interesting developmental stage in Saudi Arabia. Unevenly applied in the private sector, a combination of market forces and regulatory encouragement is driving its uptake in areas where online transactions are increasingly becoming the norm. Elsewhere in the economy, the development of cloud services is presenting a...
With a land mass bigger than that of both Iran and Pakistan, Saudi Arabian telecoms firms intending to roll out infrastructure to the country’s widely distributed population face an expensive proposition. Rural areas, in particular, have historically represented a financially unattractive prospect, lacking the client base that would make large...
In its drive to diversify the economy and reduce its reliance on oil export revenues, Saudi Arabia is backing soft loans for industry using significant state allowances. In December 2016 Khalid Al Falih, the minister of energy, industry and mineral resources, announced a substantial boost in capital provided to the Saudi Industrial Development...
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