Saudi Arabia’s ICT sector, which expanded 8 per cent between 2019 and 2021 to reach a value of $32.1 billion, is expected to witness a year-on-year growth of 2.3 per cent for 2022, with ICT spending set to top $32.9 billion, said IDC.
According to the CITC, Saudi Arabia has added 37,000 telecommunication towers since 2017, covering about 99 per cent of the Kingdom’s area. Moreover, the value of the Saudi ICT and postal markets exceeded 0.47 billion in 2021.
The data was presented during the recently held 8th edition of the ICT Indicators Forum, revealing that Saudi Arabia is now home to one of the world’s fastest-growing ICT markets.
The forum, hosted jointly by the Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) and International Data Corporation (IDC), featured enlightening presentations and panel discussions that provided valuable insights into the current ICT market and the Kingdom’s digital transformation journey. The sessions also highlighted the impact of government initiatives on enabling digital transformation across sectors in the Kingdom.
Speaking at the event, Hamza Naqshbandi, IDC’s associate vice president for Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, described the Saudi ICT sector as one of the most rapidly growing markets in the region.
“The Kingdom’s response to the pandemic was one of the strongest and most robust that any economy had to the pandemic,” said Naqshbandi.
“IDC research shows that the Kingdom was way ahead of the curve in its preparedness and response to the pandemic, and the pioneering Vision 2030 initiative has been a key facilitator of that success.”
“The growth we have forecast for Saudi Arabia’s ICT sector in 2022 is particularly significant when viewed in a regional context,” continued Naqshbandi. “And this is feeding into a broader global trend, with IDC forecasting that worldwide ICT spending will increase from $3.86 trillion in 2021 to $5.34 trillion in 2025.”
Another noted speaker at the event was Steven Frantzen, IDC’s senior vice president and managing director for the EMEA region, who urged businesses to prepare for the future, the role they will play in it, and the impact they want to achieve.
“Digital is now a permanent yet dynamic fixture in our world,” said Frantzen. “Entire industries want to intelligently leverage data to their advantage and can do so because they have faster access to digital technologies. But ‘digital first’ isn’t about picking/prioritising a particular technology or business model – it’s an organisational aspiration and a desired business cultural characteristic that should apply across customer engagement, hybrid work, unified security, remote operations, and shared business value.”
Frantzen also moderated a VIP panel discussion titled ‘The Building Blocks of Saudi Arabia’s Digital Economy -What to Expect in the Hyper-Connected Digital-First Kingdom’. The session showcased valuable insights and perspectives from a number of Saudi Arabia’s most respected ICT leaders, including Salman Faqeeh, managing director of Cisco Saudi Arabia; Rasheed A Al-Odah, country managing director at Trend Micro; Ziad Mortaja, CEO of MIS; and Majid Alotaibi, a chief business officer at Mobily.
