ASUS Targets AI-Native Hardware and Sustainable Designs for Middle East Growth in 2026

As the Middle East embraces AI, sustainability, and cybersecurity as core operational pillars, Tolga Özdil, Regional Commercial Director for Middle East, Turkey & Africa at ASUS, outlines an ambitious 2026 strategy focused on industry-specific AI PCs, energy-efficient and repairable devices, deeper channel partnerships, and expanded local teams to drive digital transformation across the region.

What opportunities do you foresee for 2026, and how do you plan to leverage them?
The Middle East is going through a shift where AI, cloud, sustainability and cybersecurity are now essential for core operations. Agentic AI and Edge AI hardware, along with Arabic-optimized AI models, are becoming more popular, and that means that there is now a solid foundation for businesses to adopt AI-driven workflows.

These trends are an opportunity for us to focus on creating smarter and faster hardware that can support heavy AI workloads. Since there is a growing focus on sustainability in the region, we see it as a challenge to offer energy-efficient designs that are also easy to repair and recycle, making ASUS’s commercial portfolio an ideal choice for those looking to reduce their carbon footprint.

What major challenges did you encounter this year, and how did you address them?
A few factors have disrupted our operations here in the Middle East. First was the Red Sea shipping volatility that impacted shipping, where we diversified routes, built buffer stock in UAE hubs, and collaborated with System Integrators to keep our ASUS Expert series deliveries stable.

Second is the adoption of AI PCs. While Gartner forecasts AI PCs will account for 43% of PC shipments this year, early demand for AI PCs has been modest. With this, we’ve positioned our AI PCs as a future-ready device and focused on businesses preparing for AI-driven workflows. We’ve highlighted the long-term value and performance that resonated with our customers, which led to fair success in the commercial segment this year.

Lastly, as data sovereignty and cybersecurity laws become stricter, we’ve strengthened our security baselines with solutions like ExpertGuardian, ensuring a higher level of enterprise-grade device protection.

Can you elaborate on your strategic partnerships this year and plans for next year?
We’ve signed multiple strategic partnerships this year as part of our focus on building a stronger partner ecosystem. These partnerships allowed us to reach new customer segments and strengthen availability, presales, and after-sales for the ASUS Expert series devices.

We’ve also worked with select end-users on lighthouse projects with real enterprise deployments to properly demonstrate our solutions and how they work in live environments. This also helped us create blueprints that can be replicated at scale.

For the upcoming year, we’re looking to strengthen these partnerships further by expanding co-selling and enablement with key system integrators and distributors. We’re also looking at local AI companies to embed their solutions into our Copilot+ hardware, packaging hardware, security baselines, and services into complete AI solutions tailored to fit their needs.

What will be your primary focus areas and strategic priorities for 2026?
AI is now becoming a standard part of daily workflows in the region, and ASUS aims to empower businesses with more AI-driven hardware as well as to embed sustainability into our core operations. We want to create devices that can handle AI workflows flawlessly with powerful performance and great battery life.

Along with that, we want to create products that are easily recyclable and repairable, which would be beneficial for our education and business customers. Moreover, core focus areas with our channel partners include building a first-party data ecosystem and utilizing AI-centric service models.

Are there plans to explore new markets or introduce new products/applications in 2026?
For 2026, ASUS is looking to move from a broad market approach to a more industry-specific strategy. Our Expert series will have purpose-built configurations tailored for healthcare, BFSI, and hospitality. The devices will also support security and manageability profiles and deployment playbooks designed for each sector’s workflows.

This strategy will be backed by a massive product rollout across commercial laptops, desktops, and AiOs (all-in-ones). These products will also have AMD options to give our customers more choice on performance, power efficiency and value.

To maintain the momentum we’ve built over the last two years, ASUS will be expanding regionally with more in-country commercial teams that will help improve presales design, project execution, and post-deployment support. The goal is to ensure faster local delivery and more consistent enterprise outcomes across the Middle East.

How is your company approaching sustainability, digital transformation, or AI adoption in preparation for 2026?
ASUS sees 2026 as a year that sustainability, digital transformation and AI adoption will come together. Sustainability will always be part of ASUS’s core strategy, designing devices that promote energy efficiency and are made with responsible materials. Our goal is to build more AI-native devices to support businesses with their digital transformation goals in line with national initiatives, especially with the rise of Agentic AI and Arabic-optimized models.