Recovery position

Regardless of whether the economic downturn has decimated their business or had hardly any impact at all, everybody in the IT channel is eager to know when the market will start posting the sort of numbers that ensure the balance sheet is kept firmly in the black.

One organisation that possesses a crystal ball larger than most is IDC, and the analyst firm recently peered it into it to serve up its latest outlook on the shape of the regional market as it stands at the moment.

As the channel has found to its cost in the past year, sourcing credible data on the health of the market remains something of a challenge in the Middle East, so IDC's findings provide a timely assessment on how the regional IT sector is bearing up.

First off, let's deal with the painful bit: 2009. Now, you don't need to be told that the past year has been the most turbulent the region has ever known, but it is useful to ascertain just how dramatically each market has been affected by what's gone on.

As a headline figure to get us on our way, overall IT spend for the Middle East and Africa in 2009 is likely to have dropped by 5% year-on-year to US$44 billion once the final bit of number crunching has been done. What does that translate as in volume terms? Well, it means that about US$3 billion of IT sales were shaved off the market compared with 2008 - not something that can be dismissed lightly when you consider how fast the regional market had been growing.

IDC is still finalising fourth quarter numbers for each country, but initial estimates suggest that annual IT spend in the UAE slumped 15% year-on-year to around US$4.1 billion during 2009.

Elsewhere in the Gulf, the Qatari and Kuwaiti IT markets contracted 4% and 6% respectively, while Saudi Arabia bucked the trend by squeezing out 2.5% growth, a figure that illustrates why vendors have been so eager to sharpen their focus on the country.

Taking a trip northwards, Egypt and the other North African markets appear to have fared better than the Gulf in general, experiencing a decrease in year-on-year sales of just 3.5% and 2% respectively.

But what about the question the channel really wants a reply to: will 2010 bring an improvement in fortunes? According to IDC, the answer is yes. In fact, it even goes as far as predicting a "big recovery", as businesses begin to release the purse strings and consumer sentiment picks up.

Saudi Arabia looks set to maintain its momentum with anticipated growth of 14% in 2010, underlining its position as the largest market in the Gulf and the second largest market in the entire Middle East and Africa region behind South Africa.

Kuwait is predicted to enjoy a 13% improvement over last year's numbers, while Qatar could spike 22% due to some large energy projects that are in the pipeline. Egypt and North Africa, meanwhile, are expected to increase 7.5% and 12% respectively, capping a speedy recovery after last year's difficulties.