The Middle East region’s premier installation show is just around the corner. Organiser IIR’s Darren Brechin talks about why it’s important.
The AV market in the Middle East is experiencing phenomenal growth and has been for a few years now, more and more people are coming to the region either to work or holiday and that is creating huge demand for more and more residential and commercial properties. Every building that is built has some sort of AV requirement, just look at the amount of AV equipment that is installed in a new hotel these days, not to mention the sophisticated systems that are being put into government and commercial buildings and offices. From a consumer point of view a home entertainment system (no matter how simple) is a necessity in every home.
Today’s customers have different objectives when purchasing AV. This is reflected on both a professional and consumer level. For example a brand new state of the art five star Leisure resort will look at sourcing the best quality and design possible therefore is willing to pay a higher price than say a smaller two star hotel that simply wants to refurbish or replace its existing systems. Likewise on a consumer level, its fair to say that locals are much more demanding than ex-patriots when purchasing consumer AV, they are wealthier and much more affluent and tend to demand the best products available whereas the less well off have to purchase within their means.
AV Technologies are affecting every aspect of day to day life in the Middle East and the sheer scale of some of the new resorts and developments means that winning an install tender for AV is a very lucrative achievement. All aspects of the AV industry are benefiting from the current boom. Education facilities are demanding the latest classroom AV, Hotels are becoming more and more AV reliant and some are becoming fully automated right through to the rooms themselves, public buildings / transportation / sporting arenas / hospitals / airports / office towers now all demand the latest in innovative AV technology.
It’s still such a new market with respect to the rest of the developed world that there are no readily available statistics to quantify the size of the market. What can be said however is that the market is growing at an incredible rate, this can be linked directly to the construction boom that the Middle east has been experiencing for the last five years, more and more AV manufacturers are opening offices in the Middle East to service the market and a few years ago that would have been unheard of.
Take the Install @ PALME Middle East exhibition as a good indicator of this growth, when the Install vertical of the PALME exhibition was launched in 2004 it occupied only 250 sqm of the exhibition floor space, in 2007 it will represent over 50% of the entire show with some 4000 sqm (8000 sqm gross) of contracted exhibition space dedicated specifically to AV / Installation Technologies.
Visitors to this year’s exhibition will be able to see the latest technologies from leading manufacturers such as Crestron, Bose, Opus Technologies, Meyer Sound, Extron and AMX, as well as meet with distributors such as the Visionaire group.
The commitment by these heavyweight companies not only strengthens the sectors in which they are predominant, but further underlines the value they perceive in reaching new markets by their participation at PALME.