North Africa is seeing a significant increase in electronics purchases, a new consumer report revealed. According to analysts at Consumer Electronics Association on Tuesday, spending has gone up four percent in the Middle East and 7 percent in Africa as a whole. While there were no specifics on North Africa specifically, Alexandre Mikhael, a Russian electronics analyst in Moscow, said he believes North Africa is one of the most important regions in terms of technology and electronics capacities. “We have seen the gulf region really steam forward on a number of tech projects, including electronics, but there time is up,” Mikhael said. He argued the region to look for in the coming few years is North Africa. CEA chief economist Shawn Dubravac said smartphones and tablet computers like Apple's popular iPad were expected to be among the hottest items in 2011. “The standard handset is a declining market,” Dubravac said. “All the growth you see is in smartphones.” The CEA forecast that tablet computer sales would double this year over last year to around 30 million units while e-readers such as Amazon's Kindle would ring up sales of nearly 20 million units worldwide. “Tablets will be one of the key themes at this year's show,” Dubravac said, as technology companies seek to emulate the success of Apple's iPad. “I wouldn't be surprised if we saw 100 plus tablets at CES,” he said, adding that the optimal price point for the devices appears to be around 350 dollars. The CEA said mobile computers — which include tablets — will account for 220 billion dollars in total personal computer sales of 316 billion dollars in 2011, with desktop computers accounting for the remaining 96 billion dollars. BM
