Kingdom of Bahrain

vertical. This vertical faces some challenges
for which we have very suitable solutions
and hence, we have started focusing on this
part of the market.
It is no doubt that this industry is facing
very difficult and challenging times but in a
way it is good because it will push solution
providers to make their offerings better and
better in order to differentiate themselves
in this time of competition and oversupply.
Moving forward
SkyStream will continue to operate and
actually at a larger scale, if I may add. Satellite
is not the only major focus for us now,
we are also focusing on military and critical
communications. We have counter systems
with multiple protection phases that have
applications in emergency situations in
public areas such as airports etc. We are
also working on another product to counter
terrorism, suicide bombs and suicide cars.
Oil & Gas is still a valid area of business
and may actually become better as we see
increase in the rise of the price of Oil once
again. However, the demand is rapidly
shifting as the entire industry including both
the buyers and the sellers are going through
some major changes in business models
to accommodate for the recent economic
conditions. Once the dust settles, it will be
much easier to come out on top for those
companies who withstand this process and
adapt to market changes accordingly – and
that is our plan. Our focus will be to focus
on the services, increasing the quantity of
services and adding value to each one of
them. Today we are offering system integration
but in the future we are looking at
provision of services that go beyond system
integration.
Critical Communications in the ME
I think the whole Middle East is important
when it comes to critical communications.
The UAE has been very supportive of businesses
like SkyStream and being our home
country, our focus remains the most within
the UAE where we plan to reciprocate the
government’s support in the form of high
quality solutions. That being said, the entire
region is currently a target market for us in
this vertical and we are offering our services
in multiple countries.
The Maritime vertical
We started offering Maritime services back
in 2009 and back then, this market was a
blue ocean with very little competition and
less market pressure. However, over the
past few years, the market has changed into
a red ocean defined by cut-throat competition
and heavy saturation. As a consequence
of these circumstances, the service offering
has also been compromised.
We are still active in the market and have
the largest fleet. We had some expansion
plans for this market as well, but we have
put those plans on halt for now to see how
the market works over the coming months.
The future is Capacity Building
What is happening today is a response to
the challenges this industry is facing. The
industry has spent billions of dollars in
building satellites. The market however has
not responded in the same manner and the
satellite companies who invested are forced
to find different solutions.
The market is currently evolving and as any
market evolves, it faces certain challenges.
We can see how other markets in the
technology industry have evolved when you
look at the telecommunications market or
the mobile phones market or the IT services
market. The same happens with almost every
market – the margins become very thin
and other companies (initially smaller) who
did not make investments benefit the most
from the market e.g. Whatsapp, Uber etc.
The future lies in capacity building and
improving yourself. The future is about
learning from mistakes in the past. For us,
that means building skills that are difficult,
in fact impossible, for others to adopt. Other
players will continue to replicate services,
but our goal is to stay one step ahead at all
times and keep evolving. If we keep learning
and evolving at the pace of the market
demand and not the pace of the industry, at
any given point, SkyStream will be ahead of
its competition and successfully capitalizing
on the market demand.
34 January 2017