I just called to say... Saudi mobile phone market is the biggest in MENA

The Saudi mobile phone market is the largest in the Middle East and boasts one of the highest mobile penetrations in the world, with 53 million subscriptions by 2013, and a mobile penetration rate of 181.6 percent - almost 2 mobiles per user.

Leaders in mobile business and decision makers across sectors will convene to discuss the latest trends and opportunities in mobility at the 3rd edition of ArabNet Riyadh, the largest digital gathering in Saudi Arabia, taking place on November 11-13.

The world has added more than a billion mobile phone subscribers in the last four years alone, with the total number reaching 3.2 billion, almost half the earth's population, organizers of an industry event said.

More than a billion of these devices are smartphones, bringing the disruptive power of internet connectivity to both professional and social spheres - whether through the 10.5 million jobs supported directly by the mobile ecosystem, or through proliferation of apps that change the way we perceive and interact with the world.

The Middle East and Africa (MEA) telephone handset market grew to its largest size in ten quarters in the second quarter of 2014, expanding 27 percent year on year to 64 million units, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC). Most of this growth was in the smartphone category. Smartphones' share of the overall MEA handset market jumped 13 percentage points year on year to 40 percent, but reaching as high as 75–80 percent in some countries.

Within Africa, Egypt and South Africa posted the largest year-on-year handset shipment growth, at 37 percent and 32 percent respectively. In the Middle East, that honor was taken by the UAE and Qatar, with respective growth rates of 27 percent and 32 percent. The UAE, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Kuwait are leading the smartphone migration trend, with the smartphone share in each country surpassing 75 percent. Even for countries with lower smartphone penetration levels like Nigeria and Kenya, the share has doubled since this time last year.

In the smartphone class, Samsung remains the comfortable leader with 45 percent of the MEA market, but its share is down 8 points from a year ago. Huawei's share has climbed from 2 percent to 10 percent, putting the vendor in second place, ahead of Apple (8 percent) and Nokia (6 percent). BlackBerry continues to suffer, enduring the biggest drop in smartphone market share of any vendor, from over 12 percent in 2013 to just under 2 percent this year. In the feature phone segment, Nokia is still top with 35 percent share, although this is down from 47 percent in the second quarter of 2013.