JEDDAH: The market for fixed-line phones is not shrinking as it is believed in certain quarters. "On the contrary, it continues to expand, despite the flooding of the market with mobile phones," Shahzad Ahmed, CEO, Gigaset Communications, told a media roundtable on Wednesday.
According to him, Saudi Arabia has 4.5 million landlines, three million of them in homes and households and the remaining 1.5 million in offices and business establishments. "In fact, there is a distinct five percent landline growth across the Kingdom annually," he said. The growth in the UAE this year for landlines is 10 percent.
"As homes get connected with fiber optic cables, the growth of landlines will be much more than expected," he said, adding that the demand for cordless fixed phones in particular is on the upswing.
While the Kingdom and the rest of the Gulf have been spared some of the worst excesses of the world credit crisis, the region is being impacted in terms of lower oil prices, tourism and a cooling of the housing market. This in turn is impacting the telecom sector in some parts of the region, he said.
"We have witnessed stable business in the cordless voice market throughout the year. We expect new growth, especially in the voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) segment as Internet connections increase and cordless voice grows," he said.
Ahmed added that the Kingdom has a very dynamic market, although the world economic slowdown had its impact, though marginally, in landline connections across some parts of the region. "We estimate the size of the market covering the Middle East and India to be over 70 million landline connections."
He said the research and development wing at Munich-based Gigaset Communication, which is a subsidiary of Siemens AG (SHC), had been able to develop phones that have an energy saving power supply that uses 60 percent less energy.
"Within our portfolio, there are a couple of specific solutions according to user requirements. The key innovations are a combo phone-corded phone plus cordless phone, wherein one can make and receive calls from the base station even during power cuts.
"With our latest models, which has a metal handset, one can use landline to send SMS. Also, one can transfer about 500 V-cards through Bluetooth. There is a mini USB port that transfers pictures conveniently from your PC," Ahmed added.
By K.S. RAMKUMAR
© Arab News 2010
