Events
ASUS and Intel Partner for Performance Day in Dubai

ASUS and Intel joined hands to conduct a special event called Performance Day in Dubai, at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on July 1, 2022. The event was hosted to showcase some of the latest trends in the market and what ASUS and Intel are doing to meet customer demand and expectations in 2022 and beyond.
At the event, it was announced that ASUS holds the number 1 market share in the East EMEA region for consumer notebooks, quoting figures from GFK’s retail market data recorded between December 2021 to April 2022. The company also announced that it was the number 1 OLED laptop brand worldwide, and the number 1 creator laptop brand, according to GFK’s and NPD’s combined retail data for the period between Q4 2021 to Q1 2022.
In terms of gaming, ASUS again came on the top. It holds the number 1 market share in the East EMEA region for gaming devices, and it has had a YoY growth of 40% in 2021. One of the most important things presented at the event was how people buy technology today, especially laptops. According to a market study conducted by KANTAR in 2019, with over 11000 users in ten different countries, end-users desired thin and light laptops.
In terms of the criteria used by people when choosing to buy a new laptop, the market study concluded that performance was the most important factor. In addition, battery life was also important – it came in the second spot of the most important feature of a new laptop. What’s more, laptop users also wanted high-quality displays and top-notch build quality.
Gaming is a High Growth Segment
At the event, Ali R. Kucuk, the Regional Director for the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa, at Intel, spoke about the company’s 12th Gen Intel Core H-Series of processors. According to Kucuk, there are around 2.9 billion gamers worldwide and 300 million creators. The gaming industry is worth $240 billion (total addressable market), and it garners a year-on-year total addressable market growth.
The 12th Gen Intel Core Mobile Processor family is divided into three segments. The U-Series of processors are meant for modern thin and light laptops with a power consumption of either 15W or 9W. Then, we have the P-Series of processors, which is meant for performance-based thin and light laptops with a power consumption of 28W. And then, we have the H-Series of processors, which is meant for enthusiasts, with a power consumption of 45W.
According to Intel, these 12th Gen Intel Core H-series Processors, are the fastest mobile processors around offering up to 40% faster performance in a hybrid design. These processors also offer low-latency Wi-Fi 6E connectivity, and blazingly fast video editing, 3D modeling, and rendering for content creators of today.
Check out the SKU Stack of the 12th Gen Intel Core H-Series Processors below:
Intel also claims that its 12th Gen Intel Core i7 H-Series (i7-12700H) is more powerful than its 11th Gen Intel Core i9 (i9-11900H). Here’s a quick look at the Intel H45 performance advancement based on the Cinebench R20 Multi-Core Score:
In addition, the 12th Gen Intel Core i5 H-Series is 2.5x more powerful than the 11th Gen Intel Core i5 U-Series, as seen below:
Built for Gamers and Creators
Furthermore, the 12th Gen Intel Core H-series processors are built for content creators. Now, here is where ASUS plays a part in bringing top-notch gaming and creator laptops onto the market. At the Performance Day event, the company showcased the Zenbook Pro 14 Duo OLED, the ROG Flow Z13, and the Zenbook 14X OLED Space Edition, all of which were paired with the 12th Gen Intel Core H45 processor, with the ROG Flow Z13 running the company’s top-end 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900H processor.
According to ASUS, its winning formula for being at the top of the notebook market is a combination of thermal design and chassis space. The company also said that its competitors barely implement H-Series processors in thin chassis, whereas ASUS uses that series of processors in most of its product lineup.
This includes the thin and light series such as Zenbook S Flip, Zenbook S, Zenbook, Zenbook Flip, Vivobook S, and Vivobook. In addition, these processors are also used in the company’s laptops for creators such as Studiobook Pro, Zenbook Pro, Zenbook Pro Duo, and Vivobook Pro. In addition, ASUS also uses H45 processors in its gaming lineup, which includes Flow, Strix SCAR, Zephyrus, and TUF Gaming.
Better Cooling Solution Helps
Cooling also aids in producing performance-based laptops, since ASUS invests heavily in R&D for fan design, airflow control systems, and 3D vapour chambers. According to ASUS, dual-fan outlets and dual heat pipes provide an extra 15% flow rate and increase in performance.
In addition, thinner blades, more fan blades, and optimized curved design lead to better airflow and quieter performance. Heat Pipes are also one of the most efficient ways to move heat or thermal energy from one point to another. ASUS says that thicker heat pipes or more heat pipes can both dissipate heat better.
Benjamin Yeh, the East EMEA General Manager at ASUS, said, “The innovations that ASUS engineers have implemented in our latest laptops, working together with our partners from Intel, have enabled us to deliver these incredible products for 2022. Their work on cooling technologies and chassis craftsmanship is a very important but challenging task. Sometimes the improvements are invisible to customers, but they help us deliver amazing performance while keeping our laptops compact and light, which is exactly what customers are expecting from their next laptop.”

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