28th Gitex Technology Week opens tomorrow

The region's largest ICT exhibition will welcome businesses and trade visitors from all over the world, with leading companies looking to expand their presence in the Middle East.

The 28th edition of the show, organised by the Dubai World Trade Centre, will officially open tomorrow, Sunday, 19 October 2008, welcoming more than 130,000 visitors and 3,300 companies from 83 countries over the next five days.

Major international companies launching new products and making announcements at the exhibition include Blackberry, Dell, du, Etisalat, Google, HP, Microsoft, Oracle, Panasonic, Samsung, Sharp, Sun MicroSystems and Symantec.

Doors will open at 1:00pm at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre (DICEC), where visitors will be able to experience the latest products and solutions first-hand from many of the biggest brands in the ICT industry.

One of the biggest highlights on the first day will be the keynote address from the Chairman and Co-Founder of Sun Microsystems, Scott McNealy, who will be speaking at this year's Gitex Technology Week Global Conference. The Conference has been expanded this year to include an impressive 35 tracks of interactive discussion, featuring some of the world's leading industry experts on new generation technology. Sessions include a series of developer workshops with specific emphasis on supporting the development of original Arabic games and software.

Taking place simultaneously at the GITEX Shopper & Consumer Electronics Expo, the inaugural GITEX Digital Game World will welcome regional teams as they battle it out in a series of organised games and online tournaments to win the opportunity to compete with the visiting world's best gamers in the 'Intel Extreme Masters' competition. GITEX Shopper & Consumer Electronics Expo is taking place at Airport Expo, Dubai, until 24 October, 2008.

"International companies have been preparing for this Gitex Technology Week all year, and participants will be impressed with what is on show. This year's event will be hugely important as companies look to find new areas of growth,"

said Helal Saeed Almarri, Director General, Dubai World Trade Centre.

This year there will be an emphasis on using Shuttle bus services in and out of Gitex Technology Week. We will be doubling the amount of shuttle buses from main points such as hotels, Malls, City Centre and Dubai Internet City.

Gitex Technology Week 2008 is open from 1pm - 7pm on 19 October, 10am - 7pm on 20-22 October and 10am - 5pm on 23 October.