16 January 2009

Outlook for 2009 – Oman’s milestones

Enthused by the strong vision of His Majesty to harness technology, more and more government websites will spruce up their online contents and start to provide electronic forms and e-services. The Oman’s government’s gateway e-services portal is expected to be launched this year along with new projects for training Omani national in various IT skills.

Private sector will seriously consider online media as a delivery channel and with the payment gateway being available; e-commerce will emerge as a new genre in the country. 2009 could even be the year of portal / website launches and those already existing will launch refreshed versions with dynamic backend systems. So web and graphics designers, web programmers may be in good demand but for the rest of the technology sales and marketing staff, the going gets tough.

Measures to increase computer and Internet penetration will see light in the New Year and this could include wider broadband connectivity through various modern technologies including VSAT. Mobile commerce will become a reality as it will be the niche point for competition in this sector. While price reduction may not be as much as expected, improvements in quality can be a reality due to competition.

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