By Innovation-sa on January 1, 2018 in News
Global tech giants Apple Inc. and Amazon.com are engaged in licensing discussions with Saudi Arabia as part of Crown Prince Muhammed bin Salman’s move to give the Kingdom a high-tech look.
SAGIA, Saudi Arabia’s foreign investment authority, is expected to complete licensing agreement with Apple in February and Apple targets to open its first retail store in the Kingdom in 2019. According to market researcher Euromonitor, Apple is currently the second most sought after mobile brand in the Saudi markets after Samsung.
Amazon’s discussions, which are being carried out by Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company’s cloud computing division is at an earlier stage than Apple and no specific date has been announced for its investment plans. Earlier this year, Amazon acquired Dubai-based online retailer Souq.com, and since then Amazon gained permission to sell its retail goods in the Kingdom. Though both Apple and Amazon have not established their direct presence in Saudi Arabia, they have been selling their products in the Saudi markets via third parties.
Over the past year, Saudi Arabia has been streamlining several of its overlapping laws that could apply to cloud computing to attract service providers.
Since then, Kingdom has entered into a $45 billion technology investment fund with Japan’s Softbank Group and announced $500 billion mega investment city with more robots than humans.
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