More than 50 UK technology firms are taking part in the Gitex Technology Week, making it the largest overseas country grouping at the event.

British companies and organisations are prominent in all three major streams of the 2007 event – Gitex Business Solutions, Gulfcomms and Consumer Electronics.

Among the world's top three exhibitions of its type with more than 133,000 visitors from 120 countries, Gitex is recognised by British companies as the most important gateway to the Middle East IT market.
 
The 2007 show is even bigger than last year's record-breaker in terms of space and British companies will be deploying a number of onsite promotional campaigns and launching new products and services to compete for their share of the Middle East’s information technology and communications market.

The UK is a major contributor to the global information technology and communications market and UK companies continue to engage in high quality research and development as well as offering sophisticated products and services.

Surveys of previous Gitex visitors show that the biggest proportion attends to gather market information and for technology updates followed by meetings with suppliers and sourcing for products and services.

To provide greater opportunity for productive business between Middle East companies and British exhibitors at this year’s Gitex, a pre-arranged meeting system has been established in association with the UK government’s Department of Trade and Investment.

Pre-arranged meetings allow personal, one-to-one time for visitors and exhibitors to discuss commercial opportunities. The system started last month with regional companies being contacted directly to set up appointments with exhibitors.

“It is the easiest and most cost-effective way for exhibitors and visitors to conduct their commercial meetings during the exhibition. The service enables meetings between potential business partners with zero hassle,” said David Lewis, one of the co-ordinators of the pre-arranged meeting system.

“Our team has already arranged dozens of meetings between British exhibitors and major regional companies. There is little doubt that business deals will emerge from many of them.”

Areas of UK expertise that will be on show at Gitex include: biometrics; advanced LAN and SAN cabling solutions; enterprise security software; information security technology; precision performance software; satellite and wireless communications; ID and card personalisation systems; specialty printing solutions; interactive learning technologies; and GPRS. – TradeArabia News Service