COMPUTING | Arnold Vlas, Intel’s Director of Corporate Marketing for Europe, Middle East and Africa, would like to see an broader adoption of PC and wireless technologies in the region. He talked to Ahmad Humeid on how this can be achieved.
“Knowledge society” and “digital economy”, “IT hub”. These are buzzwords we’ve grown accustomed to in Jordan. If we are to believe our own marketing, the e-everything reality in Jordan is just around the corner. Yet one sobering fact always reminds us that we still have a long way to go in that regard: the dismally low percentage of household that have a PC (around 10% according to estimates).
Jordan is not alone. Most Arab countries suffer from the same problem. According to The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) not only is PC usage in the Arab world on average seven times lower than the international level, but it is also significantly below that of the developing countries.
Any talk about a broad IT industry developing with such a small base of PC users remains unrealistic.
Do it like the Koreans
Mr Arnold Vlas, Intel’s Director of Corporate Marketing for Europe, Middle East and Africa, who was in Amman last week to meet with Intel’s resellers in Jordan, is definitely a man with a mission. He would like to see more people own PCs in the Arab region (especially one which have Intel Inside of course!). He cites the experience of a number of countries in this field.
“You need a number of key players in a market to come together to come up with a value proposition that makes it easier for people to own a PC,” He says. In Korea, for example, the government, working with the postal service and a number of retailers was able to pull off the feat of putting 600,000 PCs in homes in one year. The government issued a tender for a huge order of PCs thus driving the price down. It then enabled citizens to apply for easy financing through the nationwide network of post offices and worked with retailers to deliver the cheap PCs to the people. “In the end, everyone involved made money,” Mr Vlas emphasized.
In Malaysia, similar programs also contributed to the increase of PC usage. “Making the expenditure to buy a PC tax deductible as well as allowing people to draw $ 400 from their pension fund were factors that contributed to the sale of 200,000 PC under such program,” Vlas said.
“This year we are doubling our investment in developing the market in this region and we hope to reach 3000 marketing channel partners with our programs.” Vlas said. A PC ownership encouragement program for Jordan is in the works and he hopes it can be rolled out later this year.
The digital lifestyle
With the PCs increasingly becoming part of people’s life, Mr Vlas believes that coordinated marketing combing core PC and complimentary technologies around the concept of the digital mobile lifestyle has a major role to play to increase PC adoption. “For example, people are buying more laptops because they want to take their computers with them, even on holidays, to store digital pictures or check email,” He says. Intel’s PC components are starting to feature not only wireless capabilities (such as the Centrino processor) but also ‘digital home’ technologies such as Dolby Digital sound built-in on the computer’s motherboard.
As Intel is increasingly integrating wireless connectivity into the core of its products, Vlas is encouraged by the fast spread of wireless (Wifi) hotspots in a country like the UAE. Jordan has been lagging behind in this field. “One of our core messages to our partners in Jordan was to focus on Wifi,” Vlas said. Yet he emphasized that clearing regulatory issues plays the biggest role in enabling widespread adoption of wireless technologies.
His own personal experience with the benefit of wireless networking at home started when he got a call from his wife one day, telling him that the people who came to install their new PC intended to run a 30 meter wire from the ADSL access point to the room where the PC was supposed to be installed. “No way was I prepared to let that happen,” he exclaims.
Jordan’s Energy
Vlas is very encouraged by the energetic people he met both in the public and private sector in Jordan and their eagerness to push the industry ahead. In his previous job at Intel, he had the chance to observe the developments in countries like India and China, two countries that were able to develop formidable IT industries in a relatively short period. His advice to our IT industry is “find the pieces you’re good at and focus on them.”