Events
Dubai to Host the World Finals of the GIRLGAMER Esports Festival in December

Organisers of the third annual GIRLGAMER Esports Festival have announced that Dubai will host the World Finals of the event in December 2019. GIRLGAMER Esports Festival is a female-focused esports competition and the World Finals will run from December 12 to 14, 2019, at Meydan Grandstand.

Hosted for the first time in the Middle East in association with the Government of Dubai Media Office (GDMO), the Festival further reinforces Dubai’s status as a leading destination for digital content development, with esports one of the key focus sectors. It also enhances the emirate’s position as a major global venue for sporting events given its world-class infrastructure.

Attracting the mega gaming event is part of GDMO’s strategy to drive the development of the industry in the region and establish Dubai as a regional and global hub for competitive esports events under the umbrella of its Dubai 10X Media Project. The UAE was ranked the number one market in gaming in the Middle East and North Africa Region (MENA), according to recent figures. Gaming revenues in the UAE are estimated to have reached AED 1.2 billion in 2018. The UAE has also been able to attract the best international e-sports teams and leagues since 2015.

The announcement also marks the beginning of two strategic partnerships between Meydan One and Grow uP eSports, the global organiser of GIRLGAMER, and Meydan One and Galaxy Racer Esports, the first major professional esports organisation in the region, which will also see esports take on a central role and raise the bar of the industry in the Middle East. Working with Meydan One, the two entities have been instrumental in bringing the world-renowned GIRLGAMER Esports Festival to Dubai, and the synergies struck will aim to foster the development of a gender- balanced esports industry in the Middle East.

Previous legs of the 2019 GIRLGAMER Esports Festival took place in Sydney (June), Singapore (August), Seoul (September), Madrid (September) and Sao Paulo (October). Throughout the year, women-only teams compete in a range of events in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and League of Legends to qualify for the World Finals.

The potential of the esports industry in the Middle East is immense. With global revenue reaching $1.1 billion and a total audience of 453.8 million this year, esports continues to grow apace. Home to champions like Saudi Arabian Mossad “MSdossary” Aldossary, Jordanian Amer “Miracle-” Al- Barkawi and Lebanese Maroun “GH” Merhej and champion managers like Egyptian Mohamed Morad, the Middle East is filled with potential to become a major esports hub on the global stage.
Speaking of the announcement, Fahad Abdulrahim Kazim, Vice President of Meydan Malls, said: “This is a very exciting time for us. To partner with GIRLGAMER and bring one of the world’s most forward-thinking esports concepts to the Middle East is indeed an honour. Embodying the spirit of adventure that Meydan One is well known for, this move reinforces our commitment to the thriving esports industry. With the 2019 GIRLGAMER Esports Festival, we are introducing the very best modern gaming entertainment event while pushing the social envelope. We are dedicated to producing quality esports content for the region, educating people, and staging events of global magnitude in collaboration with Galaxy Racer Esports.”
With esports undergoing a social and financial boom in recent years, especially given Kyle Giersdorf’s US$3 million winner’s prize in the Fortnite World Cup 2019 in New York, all eyes are trained on the industry’s longevity and ability to promote social equality. Not one of the top 100 competitors in the Fortnite World Cup was a woman, despite a 73 million global female spectatorship of esports. Consequently, there is a major call for greater representation at all levels of the burgeoning industry.
Commenting on the significance of the GIRLGAMER event being hosted in Dubai, Ayesha bin Kalli from the Government of Dubai Media Office (GDMO), member of the Dubai 10X Media team said, “Supporting the emergence of what will soon become a booming market in the Middle East is a natural fit for Dubai, as the emirate’s reputation for identifying new opportunities demonstrates. Together with Meydan One and its strategic partners, we will elevate the status of the esports industry in the region by attracting world-class young talent to this dynamic and ever-evolving destination that continues to effortlessly move with the times.”
Bin Kalli also noted that under the Dubai 10X initiative, Dubai is preparing to build the region’s first stadium dedicated to all things esports, called the Dubai X-Stadium. The project, which seeks to establish the city as a regional and global hub for video gaming events, is a joint initiative being developed by the Government of Dubai Media Office in collaboration with TECOM Group. By hosting world-class e-sports events, Dubai X-Stadium is positioned to play a central role in the global industry.
Fernando Pereira, Global Organiser of the GIRLGAMER Esports Festival, said, “We are very enthusiastic about bringing our event to Dubai and incredibly happy to have found such amazing partners to join us in the mission towards inclusivity. Diversity is at the heart of everything we do, and the GIRLGAMER World Finals will help bring global attention to the incredible gender equality work being done in the region. We also hope to inspire the young generation to grow up more inclusive and to help parents in developing better relationships with their children.”
Maitha Shuaib, Director of Corporate Communications, Dubai Women’s Establishment (DWE), said, “We at the Dubai Ladies Club are very happy to support the organisation of the GIRLGAMER Esports Festival in Dubai. Supporting this event is aligned with the Dubai Ladies Club’s mandate to help women realise their potential and contribute to today’s ever-changing dynamic society. It is also in line with our objective to nurture the social, physical and cultural well-being of women. An event like the GIRLGAMER will help to raise the visibility of the women in esports — and tell their stories and highlight their accomplishments both in the region and across the world.”
Paul Roy, CEO, Galaxy Racer Esports – the regional partner of the event, said, “We are proud to be part of such an exciting event which is the best possible launch pad for Galaxy Racer Esports. The talent pool from the region have proven themselves on the biggest international stages and we felt the timing was perfect to launch a global esports organisation headquartered from Dubai. We couldn’t have asked for a better home than Meydan One. Stay tuned for some several more exciting announcements in the very near future.”
In the run-up to the world finals, a business conference will convene industry leaders, experts, and esports pros to discuss the future of esports and the challenges it faces in achieving greater inclusion.

Events
Huawei to Celebrate 10 Years of Tablet Innovation with its Biggest Launch Yet

Huawei has teased its soon-to-be-released products, including the HUAWEI MatePad Pro 13.2”, and announced a new global product launch in Dubai in December. This will be the largest tablet Huawei has released to date, and it signals that the company is doubling down on the tablet category. This is exciting news for all tablet enthusiasts, but the evolution of Huawei’s tablets is also quite fascinating.
A decade of excellence in the tablet market
The global tablet market has been shrinking since 2016, as new large-screen smartphones and lightweight laptops have emerged. Huawei has stayed committed to a market many vendors have left, pursuing high-level innovation and development, and launching a wide array of groundbreaking products to bring a breath of fresh air into the market.
This decade of investment and innovation has led to tens of thousands of patents and numerous cutting-edge technologies that bring powerful productivity tools to tablets for the first time, which makes it possible for Huawei to keep leading the way in light productivity.
Creating brand-new productivity tools
The global shipment of Huawei tablets now exceeds 100 million units—proof of Huawei’s continuous investment in this market. Huawei has always understood the relevance of tablets as an entertainment device. That’s why the company equipped its MediaPad M series tablets with high-end audiovisual features, which received widespread positive feedback from users, and helped boost the tablet market.
As the times changed, Huawei recognised the demand for mobile office and productivity tools, and added new features like “App Multiplier” to its MediaPad M6 and “Multi-Screen Collaboration” to its MatePad Pro 10.8”. These features set a new benchmark for productivity on the go. The MatePad Pro 11” also came with innovative apps like PC Application Engine and HUAWEI Notes, which enhanced these capabilities even further.
With the MatePad Pro 12.6”, Huawei brought a design that exudes a unique look and feel, and the MatePad Pro 11” came with a hidden floating antenna that helped improve the signal performance. The display and audio capabilities on Huawei tablets have also seen significant upgrades over the years to provide a whole new level of immersion. All these show Huawei’s consumer-orientated approach to product innovation to provide easy-to-use yet powerful functions.
Breathing new life into a stagnant PC market
Huawei’s PCs are no less impressive than its tablets, offering a rich set of features. Huawei’s PC division has leveraged the company’s experiences in other consumer product domains and the ICT industry to create a unique product lineup.
Huawei has married breathtaking aesthetics with groundbreaking technologies, such as SuperTurbo, HUAWEI Metaline Antenna, minimalist design, smart interactions, and ultimate performance. Unlike traditional PCs, Huawei laptops manage to pack such a broad array of capabilities into portable, streamlined bodies.
Huawei’s success in the tablet and PC markets owes a great deal to the company’s user-centric approach and commitment to excellence across the board—from craftsmanship to technologies to ecosystem construction. This enables Huawei to gradually become a leader in both the tablet and PC industry.
As Huawei celebrates the tenth anniversary of its tablets, the upcoming HUAWEI MatePad Pro 13.2” is a testament to its legacy, featuring many of the innovative technologies that will shape the future of the tablet market.
Events
HUAWEI XMAGE Awards Celebrate Photographers From MEA

Huawei announced the 57 winners of the XMAGE Awards 2023. The competition, which spotlights photos taken with Huawei devices, named three Grand Prize winners, 17 Best-in-Category winners, 34 Runner-up winners, and three Honorable Mentions.
This year’s winners were selected from more than 600,000 entries received between April 7 and August 15 from participants from nearly 100 countries. After China, the five countries with the highest number of entries were Malaysia, Türkiye, Poland, the Philippines, and the UAE. The most popular phone models used were the HUAWEI P60 Pro, HUAWEI P40 Pro, and HUAWEI Mate 40 Pro.
Out of the 17 Best-in-Category winners in the Global XMAGE Awards, one hails from Egypt. Sadek Khafagy won the award in the Outdoor category for his work titled “Reflection.” His image captures the striking beauty of the unique rock formations of The Wave in Arizona. After a rainy day, water pools in this area reflect the oranges and yellows of the layered rock walls and bright blue sky. Khafagy’s photograph masterfully depicts this vista in perfect symmetry.
A number of photographers from the MEA region have won special awards from the Huawei community. The UAE, being one of the countries with the most submissions, bagged 10 out of the 15 MEA XMAGE Awards dolled out in 2023. Their images told rich visual stories from breathtaking landscapes, glistening architecture, and the diverse culture of the UAE. Talented photographers from Saudi Arabia and South Africa also earned Special Awards. The special awards had gold, silver and bronze winners in several categories ranging from Portraits and Art&Fashion to Hello Life and Outdoor.
Gold Winners: In the Art&Fashion category, the image “Art-Chitecture” captures a unique architectural design with excellent composition that almost makes it look like a flower. The portrait “Drying Up” is a monochrome shot of a man drying hotel towels, full of a sense of story. And “Water Drop” in the Hello Life category was a creatively inverted macro shot of a water droplet against a surreally colourful background.
Silver Winners: In Hello Life, “Golden Summertime” encapsulated the radiance of summer in a vivid splash of golden sunset colours. The portrait “Behind the Mask” shows an Emirati girl with her eyes conveying deep emotion behind her traditional face mask, a poetic image that celebrates cultural heritage. The joyful “Best Buddies” image depicts the silhouette of children at the beach against the colourful hues of the evening sky, representing the innocence and sincerity of childhood friendship.
The expressive portrait “Innocent Beauty” masterfully uses chiaroscuro lighting to accentuate the doe-eyed gaze of a young girl. In the Outdoor category, the “Skyscrapers” feature tiny window cleaners rappelling down the gleaming facade of a soaring skyscraper. This photo contrasts immense architecture with small human figures.
Bronze Winners: The serene “The Kite Runner” captures a solitary young boy silhouetted against a misty dawn sky as he tries to fly his kite. The cinematic “Life Sun” depicts the blazing sun casting dramatic rays through the immense desert landscape of Al-Ula. Another spectacular shot titled “Kyrgyzstan Postcard View” documents the culmination of a rewarding 9-hour mountain trek, showcasing the cascading valleys and jagged peaks revealing themselves in a breathtaking panorama.
The “The Last Light” is an atmospheric landscape taken at dusk, the fading sun casting the mountainous terrain in an ethereal glow. The “Night Under the Galaxy’s Lights” places an SUV in the middle, framed by the dazzling sweep of the Milky Way and some light-painting trickery. The image titled “There is No Love Like Snail Love” playfully highlights nature’s wonder through two spiralled gastropods tenderly exploring each other’s shells. And the portrait of a farmer carrying a woven basket on his head demonstrates excellent cultural storytelling.
Through unique perspectives, artistry, and storytelling, these 15 photographers from the Middle East and Africa have proven themselves at the forefront of their field.
“Dragon Clouds” by Domcar Calinawan Lagto from the Philippines, “Airshow” by Piotr Cebula from Poland, and “Fearless Eagle” by Dou Chuanli from China were awarded the Grand Prizes. Each Grand Prize winner will receive 10,000 USD (before tax) from the XMAGE creation fund, to support their photography and to encourage them to continue using Huawei devices in the future.
The 17 Best-in-Category winners and the 34 Runner-up winners were selected from each category, and will each receive $1500 and $1000, respectively.
The HUAWEI XMAGE Awards showcase how the XMAGE brand has inspired users’ creativity in mobile photography. Mobile imaging is a powerful lens for capturing life’s precious moments and as a tool for stimulating visual ideas. The HUAWEI XMAGE Awards has come a long way since its launch in 2017. The contest has inspired individuals to create magnificent photographs with their phones. It has also become a platform for showcasing wonderful images that provide glimpses into photographers’ perspectives on the world and their daily lives. Today, the XMAGE Awards has emerged as a prominent global photography event, igniting a wave of enthusiasm among individuals to express their emotions, exude confidence, and unleash their creativity through mobile photography.
The full list of award winners is available here: https://consumer.huawei.com/en/campaign/xmage
Artificial Intelligence
The 43rd Edition of GITEX GLOBAL to Take Place From 16th to 20th October 2023

The surge in international demand has rallied the world’s largest tech and start-up event to scale even higher and bigger in 2023, spearheading a global tech takeover across two Dubai mega venues next month. The 43rd edition of GITEX GLOBAL will take place from 16-20 October 2023, the blockbuster tech showpiece once again reaching full capacity at the Dubai World Trade Centre as it prepares to host more than 6,000 exhibitors, while Expand North Star, the world’s largest start-up event hosted by Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy, will kick-off its largest ever edition from 15-18 October 2023 at the new Dubai Harbour venue, featuring 1,800 start-ups from 100-plus countries at the Middle East’s biggest iconic superyacht hub.
GITEX GLOBAL and Expand North Star will comprise a combined 41 halls spanning 2.7 million sq. ft of exhibition space – a 35 per cent increase over the previous year – converging the best minds and most visionary companies to scrutinise, challenge, define, and empower the digital agendas of the world. GITEX GLOBAL will present the year’s largest AI showcase and summit, its record growth fuelled by the AI innovation wave currently gripping the globe’s imagination, as 3,500 AI-infused exhibitors reveal how this next big technology shift is transforming lives, governments, businesses, and society.

Trixie LohMirmand, Executive Vice President, Events Management, DWTC
The AI boom has also added another layer of complexity to protecting digital assets and critical IP infrastructure, with the elevated GITEX Cyber Valley taking the fight directly to the dark cyber-criminal underworld, gathering leading info-sec brands and global experts at the year’s biggest cyber security showcase. Amplifying this growth, the launch shows GITEX Impact and Future Urbanism Expo promise to be the epicentre of ground-shaking shifts in climate technology while advancing sustainable cities, and co-creating a net zero future ahead of the UN climate change summit, COP28.
“The intense demand for involvement in GITEX from the global tech and start-up community is an acknowledgement of the strong impetus to learn, exchange, debate and challenge the recent developments in the tech sphere,” said Trixie LohMirmand, Executive Vice President of Events Management at DWTC, the organiser of GITEX GLOBAL and Expand North Star. “From AI, and cyber to the mounting interest in clean tech, GITEX converges public and private sector leaders from more than 170 countries to explore the new unknown paradigms of the future digital economy.”

Steven Yi, President, Huawei MIddle East and Central Asia
Expand North Star hosted by the Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy will scale to a record size in 2023, featuring 1,800 start-ups start-up exhibitors this year to connect, inspire, and extend engagements in one of the world’s most innovative and entrepreneurial ecosystems. More than 1,000 investors from 70 countries with $1 trillion under management will also converge at the new Dubai Harbour venue, as they look to ramp up the momentum in start-up investment after a year of tepid achievements.
Saeed Al Gergawi, Vice President of the Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy, said, “Expand North Star is set to drive the next era of digital entrepreneurship and inspire the next generation of innovators and thinkers. This landmark event will serve as a strategic catalyst to expand the future of Dubai’s digital economy, creating an unrivalled platform to gather key stakeholders from the global start-up community here in the emirate.”
GITEX GLOBAL 2023 welcomes the biggest tech names delving into the latest trends, risks, challenges, and opportunities that are redefining entire industries, spearheaded by returning titans including Dell Technologies, e&, Google, Huawei, HP, IBM, Microsoft, and Tonomus. Among the debut exhibitors supercharging their international growth strategies and forging new connections are Salesforce, Broadcom, Beyon, and Deloitte.

Saeed Al Gergawi, Vice President of Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy
Steven Yi, President of Huawei Middle East & Central Asia said: “At Huawei, GITEX GLOBAL continues to hold great importance to our business year after year. This year, our theme, ‘Accelerate Intelligence,’ demonstrates our commitment to delve into the transformative power of AI, networks, and cloud technologies. Together, we will explore how these converging forces are reshaping our world and how we can unleash the full capabilities of AI-powered solutions to reshape industries worldwide with cyber security, privacy protection and safeguarding our customer’s digital transformation journey remaining our top priorities.”
More information is available at www.gitex.com and www.expandnorthstar.com