Interview: Al Hamami Technology CEO, Abdulrahman Al Hamami


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In an exclusive interview with Abdulrahman Al Hamami, CEO, Al Hamami Technology discusses the company’s operations in the region.
TECHx: Can you please give an overview of Al-Hamami Technology and its operations in the region?

Al Hamami technology is a technology reseller baby that started from the Saudi market and the IT consumable products retail chain. Now with a new business insight by the year 2020, it formulated a new business strategy to set up a series of blended online and offline superstores for the ICT products across the Middle East and African countries.

The ICT market in the Middle East will witness steady growth in the upcoming year especially after the corona crash, mainly driven by governments’ digital transformation initiatives and enterprises’ acceptance of disruptive technologies. The various governments and large enterprises are focused on the development of an enterprise-centric or application-specific service portfolio to be able to monetize 5G network investments, which is expected to boost telecom service revenue in the region. Some of the key technology trends in the telecommunication and media space include 5G, fiber network expansion, software-defined networks, and IoT network investments, whereas cloud computing and data centers, AI, cybersecurity, and conversational platforms are the important trends in the IT ecosystem. This will bring more technology consumption among the individuals and MSME sectors too.

Al Hamami Technology is focusing to address the market thirst for the technology. The digital transformation will help to bring an unprecedented surge of technology consumption in every residence too. IT is going to be more realistic and wider popular, for example, IT market in Saudi Arabia is poised to grow by $6.24 billion during 2020-2024 progressing at a CAGR of 9% within 4 years’.

With the emphasis on reducing dependency on the oil industry, several Middle Eastern countries are formulating strategies to boost the contribution of the ICT market to the GDP. In this regard, governments and enterprises have embraced various disruptive technologies as part of their digital transformation initiatives. These factors, in turn, will drive market growth. The predicted booming e-commerce sector and the launch of the National Transformation Program (NTP) is anticipated to boost the growth of the market as well.

The study was conducted using an objective combination of primary and secondary information including inputs from key participants in the industry. The report contains a comprehensive market and vendor landscape in addition to an analysis of the key vendors.

Now Al Hamami is focusing to give its value addition being a VAR of the leading technology brands with strong and steady footsteps across this Middle East and Africa region which already firmly started from the city of Dubai and is moving fast to the other major cities in the region.

TECHx: Over the past few months, Al Hamami has strengthened its position in the ICT Reseller segment. What verticals are you focusing on and the target region?

Al Hamami is focusing more on the technology consumer markets, MSME sector and the fast-growing home segments too.

Consumables and end-customer devices, including printers, PCs, tablets, laptops, Chromebook and mobile devices, AV equipment, including projectors, interactive whiteboards and digital signage, networking, including both wired and wireless solutions, switches, access points and controllers, servers and storage, from small business servers to data centers, and a range of storage options such as NAS, SAN, HDD, SSD, Telephony, such as on-premise and hosted VoIP, Software, licensing and warranties, including Microsoft licensing and many more. The exploding e-learning market after the lockdown of the year 2020 brings a lot of new requirements in technology consumables. The remote working or work from home created a situation for the IT products to penetrate to the blue ocean market of the domestic segment we believe we can address this market demand through our chain of retail and online superstores.

TECHx: Apart from being a Reseller/VAR, we hear that you are also focusing on a strong Retail presence, can you tell us about the plans in this space?

Yes, Al Hamami technology is introducing a wide chain of technology retail stores. The region’s two biggest economies – the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – in particular, have high internet and smartphone penetration levels. Across the GCC, internet penetration has tripled in the past eight years to 60% by 2019. Around 95% of individuals in the UAE use mobile phones. This population is digitally savvy and consumes thrice the amount of video content compared to the USA.

Al Hamami technology has immense confidence that we can be a remarkable stakeholder in the technology retail trend of this region

TECHx: The pandemic has changed quite a bit in the channel ecosystem in 2020. What kind of demand did you see in 2020 for IT products and what kind of growth/demand can we expect in 2021?  

We foresee with hope the post-pandemic period will bring a new market, especially in the technology consumer segment. Residents of this region spend on average about 3 hours daily on various social media platforms. Specifically, KSA has announced multiple reform programs like Saudization, Guardian Laws, and Saudi Vision 2030 in a bid to position itself as a liberal and open economy. Meanwhile, in the UAE, new regulations and investment policies are driving the consumption story and pushing e-commerce growth. At the same time, the government is investing heavily in retail, infrastructure, and tourism to boost employment as well as the per capita income of local players. Retail as a percentage of the region’s GDP usually varies between 15% and 20%. MENA’s retail sector is valued at USD 400 billion, of which the two biggest economies – UAE and KSA together, takeaway 50% share. In the UAE and KSA alone, the respective retail sectors are valued at USD 65 billion and USD 135 billion.

2021 is a promising year for the technology market theoretically and practically. We want to share the same hope with everybody and we put forward the idea to believe in technology as it will transform our life into another shape soon with a lot of new opportunities.


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