Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are in the top seven among the 15 developed countries in digital transformation, according to Pablo Iacopino, Head of Research and Commercial Content, GSMA Intelligence.
During June-August 2025, the GSMA Intelligence surveyed more than 850 enterprises across 10 vertical sectors in eight Middle East and North Africa (Mena) countries to gain insight into their digital transformation as part of a wider global survey covering 5,320 enterprises in 32 countries, including both developed and developing countries.
"Looking at the overall digital transformation score of the 15 developed countries surveyed, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE are in the top seven. This confirms the GCC (Gulf Co-operation Council) plays an important role as a leading (and benchmark) region in the digital transformation of enterprises and industries, offering a favourable environment for developing and scaling new technologies and innovations," Iacopino said in the research article presented at the World Mobile Congress (MWC) 2025, which began here Wednesday.
Across Mena, the top three vertical sectors leading on digital transformation are financial services, retail, and the manufacturing and industrial sectors, he said, adding the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector is at the bottom of the ranking. In general, all vertical sectors show eagerness to accelerate digital transformation but investment budgets vary.
Highlighting investing for growth initiative in the region, he said there is a solid consensus among enterprises in the GCC and wider Mena region that digital transformation brings multiple benefits, with enhanced security the top objective in five of the eight countries surveyed.
Beyond security, revenue-related objectives are deemed slightly more important than cost-related objectives, according to him.
To capture the benefits, the Mena enterprises will spend 10% of their revenues on digital transformation during 2025-30. As expected, the bigger the enterprise, the higher the spent. At the same time, Mena enterprises expect a 200% Rol (return on investment) on digital transformation spend (aligned to the global average), he said.
"Globally, Qatar and the UAE are among the countries where enterprises make the highest advanced use of GenAI (Generative AI)," he said, adding Al and connectivity will be the leading areas of spend.
"This comes as no surprise given the consensus among the GCC and Mena enterprises that Al will have a big impact across several business areas with enhanced security and productivity/efficiency gains leading," Iacopino said, highlighting that across Mena, most enterprises undertaking digital transformation already use GenAl, but only 39% are currently making advanced use of it, leaving room for growth.
Finding that 5G is seen as important for digital transformation in all Mena countries and sectors; he said in 5G use cases (FWA, IoT, network APIs, private networks) and new network technologies such as edge and slicing, the GCC enterprises lead on expectations of impact.
"This reflects recent progress made by operators and vendors on driving the deployment of standalone 5G networks and associated capabilities," according to him.
Of the seven operators to have launched 5G-Advanced (5G-A) networks worldwide (as of September 2025), two are from the GCC. In addition to that, 11 operators from the GCC countries have announced plans to launch 5G-A, bringing the total to 13 and confirming the GCC's ambitions to lead on the network technology.
