Piracy losses to software companies in Saudi Arabia amounted to more than one billion riyals ($267m) last year, reported the Gulf News on Thursday.
Pirated software accounts for 73 percent of total software in circulation in the kingdom, said Abdul Aziz Al Dahshan, manager of a major computer company in Riyadh.
This was partly due to the growth in the use of PCs which exceeds 27 percent a year, the paper added.
Some 100,000 new computer users enter the market every year, he said.
Saudi officials are making great efforts to limit piracy and prevent the entry of pirated software through air, land and sea ports, according to the paper. Pirated software products worth hundreds of thousands of dollars have been confiscated in recent times.
These measures will lead to reducing piracy this year by no less than 20 percent, especially after firm abidance by copyright and intellectual property laws, he told the paper.
Some 223,000 computers worth $500 million were sold last year.
"Thirty-five percent of these PCs are being assembled in Saudi Arabia," said Ali Dhamiri, general manager of Compaq Saudi Arabia.
The volume of computer, software, network and maintenance market in Saudi Arabia was about $2 billion annually.
Dhamiri expected the Saudi market to grow by 19 percent this year, after PCs are introduced in more government and private sector offices, the paper quoted him as saying - Albawaba.com
