AMD plans to to set up its Middle East sales and marketing office in the Dubai Internet City by next month.

The office will provide a sales support centre for AMD's partners and customers in the Middle East and North Africa.

Said Dr. Omar bin Sulaiman, chief executive officer of Dubai Internet City, "AMD's vast expertise will make it an extremely valuable addition to the Dubai Internet community.

"Establishing its Middle East headquarters in Dubai Internet City will help AMD tap growing opportunities in the region's fast-growing Information and Communication Technology market. With the PC and server markets in the region growing exponentially, AMD is ideally placed to capitalise on a host of new business opportunities."

"Through our existing distribution channel, AMD has seen a steady adoption of its solutions in the Middle East, namely AMD's award-winning processors based on AMD64 technology, the AMD Athlon 64 processor and the AMD Opteron processor," said Giuliano Meroni, group vice president, sales and marketing, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region.

"We think that it is the right time for AMD to strengthen our ecosystem based in this fast-growing region."

According to Gartner – PC Quarterly statistics for the fourth quarter, AMD saw an annual unit growth rate of 77 per cent in 2003 in mobile PCs and a unit growth rate of 26 per cent in the desktop PC market in the same period in EMEA.

"We are seeing more partners like IBM, HP, Sun, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, and Acer, as well as local white box producers, introducing AMD processor-based servers, PCs and notebooks in this region," said Pierre Bruns-wick, AMD's regional sales director for Russia-CIS, Middle East and Africa.

"We have a strong commitment to this region and, as our distribution grows, we need to develop additional sales, technical and marketing support for all our partners. Dubai Internet City provides us with a strategic base to develop this support for the Middle East and North Africa."