Technology distribution across the Middle East, Türkiye and Africa is showing an increasingly uneven performance, with the UAE and Türkiye leading infrastructure growth while Saudi Arabia remains below last year’s levels, according to the latest research from Context.
The company’s latest distribution sales data shows regional infrastructure revenue strengthening in the third quarter, supported by momentum in servers and enterprise storage. However, the recovery is concentrated in particular markets and product categories, with Saudi Arabia’s weaker performance highlighting the limits of a region-wide growth story.
In September, Saudi Arabia was the only one of the five META markets tracked to record total distribution revenue below its 2025 average. Its revenue index stood at 94.8, compared with 144.9 in the UAE, where a reading of 100 represents each market’s average monthly revenue in 2025.
“While the headline figures suggest an uneven recovery, the underlying data reveals a complex transition,” says Dylan Chadha from Context. “The UAE and Türkiye are experiencing robust, broad-based infrastructure growth. In contrast, Saudi Arabia’s surge in core hardware like disk storage and computing components indicates foundational investments are being made now, which will likely trigger software and services spending in subsequent quarters.”
Saudi distribution revenue fell approximately 9% year on year in the third quarter. September brought an improvement from August, but the increase was smaller than the seasonal rises recorded in both 2024 and 2025.
The strongest Saudi categories in September were disk storage, computing components and mobile computing, with revenue respectively 66%, 42% and 38% above their 2025 monthly averages. Server computing was 12% above its baseline, while desktop computing was broadly level.
Software and licences, however, remained 16% below their 2025 average, with networking systems 9% below and warranties and services approximately 48% below.
While this contrast indicates a delay in broader project-related spending, this lag is typical in large-scale enterprise and public sector deployments, where foundational hardware procurement frequently precedes the rollout of associated software and long-term service contracts by several quarters.
The regional enterprise picture was more encouraging. Context’s infrastructure tracking showed the UAE and Türkiye leading growth as the market moved through the second half of 2026, with servers and storage providing particular momentum.
AI-capable servers accounted for 12% of server revenue through distribution in Q3, up from 11% in Q2 and 5% in Q1.
Their share remained below the 30% recorded in Q3 2025, when large deals lifted the comparison. However, rather than signaling a decline, this steady quarter-on-quarter progression throughout 2026 points to a healthier, more sustainable baseline of AI adoption across standard enterprise environments – moving the market beyond its previous reliance on isolated mega-deals.
“The normalisation of AI server sales is actually a very positive indicator,” says Chadha. “Rather than relying on large, one-off deals as we saw in 2025, we are now tracking a steady, quarter-on-quarter acceleration from 5% in Q1 to 12% in Q3. This shows that everyday enterprises across the META region are actively integrating AI into their standard infrastructure planning.”