His job is to convert that momentum into sales on the ground, and his pitch rests on a simple chain of logic: people want quality, and quality eats storage. “They now have access to content from every YouTuber, every TikToker, every Instagram creator,” he says. “People are demanding more quality, and quality requires more storage, more capacity, more endurance.” AI, in his telling, only sharpens the need. A chatbot answering in three seconds is “analysing billions of data points and delivering instantly,” he says, and the devices carrying those features- phones, laptops, anything AI-enabled, need faster, higher-endurance memory to keep up.

Gamers, phones and cameras

The clearest demand, Azzi argues, comes from three consumer tribes. First, serious gamers, “not amateurs like me who play a couple of hours a month, but people sitting at a console or PC every day”. For them, Sandisk is rolling out its Optimus internal-drive range across the region.

Announced at CES 2026 to replace its WD_BLACK and WD Blue internal SSD branding, the family comprises Optimus for content creators, Optimus GX for gamers and the flagship Optimus GX PRO for developers, professionals and gamers building AI PCs, workstations and high-end PCs. The PCIe 5.0 Optimus GX PRO 8100 is rated for sequential read speeds of up to 14,900MB/s, with a Dashboard Gaming Mode designed to enhance drive performance for gaming workloads. “Gamers don’t want latency,” Azzi says. “Any fraction of a second matters to them.”

The second tribe is everyone with a phone. Azzi says rising memory prices have led some manufacturers to limit storage in value models to protect price points, trimming a model “from 256 to 128, keeping a certain [average selling price] to meet most of the consumer’s purchasing power.” That, to him, is an opening rather than a threat.

Sandisk’s Ultra Dual Drive offers additional external capacity for compatible phones “for far less than the cost of buying a new one”, while the newer Extreme Fit pushes the idea further: a USB-C drive offering up to 1TB, “so small you can barely tell it’s plugged into your phone.” It lets a handset offload storage and run better, he says, and drops just as easily into a laptop, providing “an extra terabyte you’d never know was there.” For anyone shooting in 4K or 8K, “where you’re doubling your storage by the minute,” that headroom has to come from somewhere.

The third is creators and photographers, and Sandisk has built an entire product line to follow them from capture to edit. A refreshed three-tier portable SSD range runs from a 1,000MB/s everyday drive up to the Extreme PRO, which hits read speeds of 4,000MB/s and, Sandisk says, can move 10 minutes of 12K footage in under a minute, both Extreme models ruggedised to an IP65 rating with three-metre drop protection and hardware encryption. A parallel Creator Series adds a MagSafe-mounted Creator Phone SSD that records Apple ProRes 4K video directly off a compatible handset, alongside desk drives scaling to 8TB and Extreme PRO SD cards built for continuous 6K and 8K capture. “New cameras are arriving with powerful processors and AI features,” Azzi says, “and our SD cards close that gap.”

That breadth, he says, is the real moat. “We cover the entire spectrum, from the smallest user to the very high end,” he says, adding that much of the growth is coming from people who “started on their phones, then turned it into a profession” and now need broadcast-grade kit. It is also, he insists, why he refuses to compete on price alone: “Competition can be about pricing, but those details aren’t what matter most to us. What matters is the breadth of our range.”

The pricing question — and the cloud one

Pricing remains an important part of that growth story. Sandisk said roughly two-thirds of its 51 per cent sequential revenue increase in the fourth quarter came from higher pricing, with about one-third coming from greater volumes. At the consumer level, Azzi said higher memory prices were leading some manufacturers to reduce storage capacity in value models to preserve their price points.

Even so, Azzi remains unconvinced that cloud storage will reduce demand for local hardware. Cloud storage “has its limits and its costs,” he says, and cannot match the feel of local hardware: a gamer running off the cloud “won’t get the experience he has with an Optimus GX built into his console.” In emerging markets especially, he says, buyers still want their data physically close — “in the drawer where they sleep, next to their bed.”

Behind the consumer shelf, Sandisk is pushing the same flash technology deeper into AI itself. Its BiCS10 TLC 3D NAND technology delivers a 59 per cent improvement in bit density over BiCS8, according to the company. Separately, Sandisk and Kioxia have unveiled a ninth-generation 2Tb QLC 3D flash technology designed for AI infrastructure, with an interface speed of 4.8Gb/s, 33 per cent higher than their eighth-generation devices. Sandisk is also working with SK hynix and other industry participants to standardise high-bandwidth flash, or HBF, which is designed to combine high bandwidth with high capacity for AI inference systems. Across the Middle East and Africa, Azzi says Sandisk is widening its distribution and targeting the region’s growing communities of creators, gamers and developers.

Azzi’s own formula is less about silicon than presence. The company’s edge, he says, comes from staying “on the ground, with our distributors and with the end user who actually buys the product.”

For all the talk of AI infrastructure and next-generation flash, his regional task is more immediate: make increasingly complex products easy to understand, show consumers why more storage matters and ensure Sandisk is there when a phone, camera or gaming system runs out of room.

Dubai’s Parkin Company reported a 12 per cent increase in second-quarter net profit, as growth in seasonal cards, developer parking and enforcement revenue offset weaker demand for public parking.

Net profit rose to Dhs166.2m in the three months ended June 30, from Dhs148.4m a year earlier, the company said.

Revenue increased 14 per cent to Dhs364.1m, while earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation rose 15 per cent to Dhs217.2m. Its EBITDA margin edged up to 60 per cent from 59 per cent.

“Growth was driven by our seasonal cards, developer parking and enforcement segments, offsetting softer public parking demand during the quarter,” chief executive Mohamed Abdulla Al Ali said.

Public parking revenue fell 8 per cent to Dhs121.9m, reflecting lower hourly transactions and utilisation as customers shifted towards seasonal cards, as well as what the company described as the temporary impact of regional geopolitical developments.

Public parking transactions declined to 27.2 million from 29.2 million a year earlier, while the utilisation rate dropped to 20.2 per cent from 22.7 per cent.

Parkin said seasonal card holders were not included in the utilisation measure because the cards represented a separate revenue stream. Seasonal card sales climbed 38 per cent to 97,500 during the quarter, driving a 50 per cent rise in revenue from seasonal cards and permits to Dhs78.2m.

Developer parking revenue increased 61 per cent to Dhs35.8m after transaction volumes rose 75 per cent to 6.6 million. The number of developer parking spaces more than tripled to 61,500 from 19,600 a year earlier following contracts signed mainly during the second half of 2025.

Enforcement revenue rose 11 per cent to Dhs107.5m. Parkin issued 695,000 enforcement notices during the quarter, up 5 per cent, while its smart inspection vehicles scanned 20.6 million number plates, a 52 per cent increase.

Parkin’s total parking portfolio expands

The company’s total parking portfolio expanded 27 per cent to about 268,300 spaces. Public parking spaces increased 8 per cent to 203,200, with 7,900 spaces added during the second quarter.

Parkin lowered its 2026 public parking revenue forecast to between Dhs510m and Dhs550m, from its previous range of Dhs560m to Dhs610m, citing strong demand for seasonal cards and the time required for newly added spaces to reach expected utilisation levels.

It raised its seasonal card revenue forecast to between Dhs280m and Dhs300m, from Dhs260m to Dhs280m, and increased its developer parking guidance to between Dhs130m and Dhs150m, from Dhs110m to Dhs130m.

The company said its overall financial outlook remained broadly unchanged and maintained its annual enforcement revenue forecast of Dhs420m to Dhs460m. Capital expenditure guidance was unchanged at Dhs45m to Dhs55m.

Parkin also maintained its dividend policy, under which it intends to pay dividends twice a year, in April and October.

We spoke to Rory McEntee, GymNation‘s new chief marketing officer, about the thinking behind the collection, the consumer trends shaping the fitness market, and how the brand sees the industry evolving over the next five years.

GymNation has just unveiled the world’s first Muscle Thobe and Ghutra collection. What consumer insight led to the idea, and what does it tell us about how fitness culture is evolving across Saudi Arabia and the wider GCC?

The insight came from something far more insightful than a data point; it came from speaking to our own members. Across Saudi Arabia in particular, we noticed a pattern: men would train hard, in full performance kit, and then the second the session ended, they’d change straight back into a thobe. They told us they wanted a premium athleisure outfit as a comfortable and stylish option before and after training, commuting to the gym or socialising with friends.

That gap told us something important about where fitness culture in the region is heading. This generation isn’t choosing between tradition and training – they’re holding both, comfortably, at the same time. The Muscle Thobe isn’t a novelty product. It’s a direct response to how a young Saudi actually lives: proud of his culture while all serious about his health. We built it in consultation with members and cultural advisors precisely because it had to respect the garment, not just reference it.

Your latest survey found that 94 per cent of people aspire to live healthier lives, while 43 per cent have increased their spending on health and fitness over the past year. What broader consumer trends are you seeing, and how are they shaping GymNation’s strategy?

What we’re seeing underneath those numbers is a move from fitness-as-vanity to fitness-as-identity. Training is becoming part of how people see themselves and how they want to be seen – socially, culturally, professionally.

From a trend perspective, mental health has overtaken aesthetics as the primary reason people train – in our survey of over 15,000 members, 93 per cent told us they want to improve their mental wellbeing, which tells you training is now as much about stress management and control as it is about how you look. Second, and this is the one that really shapes our strategy: 51 per cent of our members had no gym membership at all in the 12 months before joining us. That’s not people switching brands; that’s genuinely new demand being created – which means the market isn’t a fixed pie we’re fighting over; it’s actually growing.

Third, the barriers are still real. Affordability remains the single biggest reason non-gym-goers stay on the sidelines – 58 per cent cite price as the blocker – and gymtimidation hasn’t gone away either, particularly for women, where it still affects half of those we surveyed. So the trend isn’t just “more people want to be healthy,” it’s “more people want to be healthy, but a lot of them still don’t feel the industry is built for them.”

That’s exactly what shapes our strategy. If price and intimidation are the two biggest barriers, our job isn’t to build for the people already comfortable in a gym – it’s to build for the 51 per cent who’ve never walked into one before. Affordable access, non-intimidating environments, and content and community that meet people before they’re already converted. We’ve built our entire model around removing those two barriers specifically, and the data keeps telling us it’s the right call.

Government initiatives such as Saudi Vision 2030 and We The UAE 2031 have placed greater emphasis on sport and wellbeing. How have these initiatives changed the fitness landscape, and where do you see the biggest opportunities for the private sector?

These initiatives did something the private sector alone couldn’t have done at the same speed – they made fitness and wellbeing a national conversation, not just a personal one. Once health becomes part of a country’s stated ambitions, participation stops being a niche interest and starts becoming a mainstream expectation. That’s a fundamentally different market to build in.

The opportunity for the private sector is to translate that top-down ambition into something accessible at street level. Government vision sets the direction; it’s on operators like us to make sure a 24/7, low-cost, high-quality gym is actually within reach of the people the vision is meant to serve – not just the top end of the market. The biggest opportunity I see over the next few years is infrastructure at scale: more locations, in more neighbourhoods, priced so that “aspiring to be healthier” doesn’t stay aspirational. That’s exactly what our expansion plan is built around.

We’re seeing more brands move away from global, one-size-fits-all campaigns in favour of products and experiences designed specifically for local communities. Do you think localisation is becoming a competitive advantage for businesses in the Middle East?

Yes, and I’d go further: I think it’s becoming the competitive advantage, not just one of several. For a long time, brands entering this region ran the same campaign, the same product line, the same messaging they’d run in London or New York, with a light regional coat of paint. That approach is losing effectiveness fast, because consumers here are more discerning, more online, and more aware than ever of when something has been built for them versus adapted for them.

Nike’s Pro Hijab and Gymshark’s modest activewear line both showed the same thing in the global sportswear space – that community-led design outperforms top-down design. The Muscle Thobe sits in that same tradition, but specific to this market and this garment. Brands that treat the GCC as a genuine design input – not just a distribution market – are the ones that will win loyalty here over the next decade. The ones that don’t will keep wondering why their global campaigns underperform locally. Even between the UAE and KSA, we adapt all our comms, events, and overall approach, as the markets and consumers especially are very unique.

Looking ahead, how do you see the fitness industry evolving over the next five years, and what role do you think innovation, community and technology will play in attracting and retaining the next generation of members?

Most of the industry is still thinking about AI the wrong way. It’s been treated as a back-office efficiency tool – chatbots, scheduling, the odd automated report – when the real opportunity is using it to actually understand the member in front of you. The winners over the next five years won’t be the ones with the best or most equipment – they’ll be the ones who use AI to understand behaviour at an individual level and act on it.

That’s exactly the thinking behind the new GymNation app we’re rolling out this month. It’s not a bolt-on loyalty scheme with a few badges – it’s built around genuine behavioural science: understanding why a member trains three times one week and zero the next, what actually keeps someone consistent versus what just looks motivating on paper, and using gamification that’s rooted in real psychology rather than generic point-scoring. The goal is an app that knows a member well enough to nudge them at the right moment, not just log what they’ve already done.

But I’d push back on anyone who thinks technology alone solves retention – it doesn’t. Community does the heavy lifting, and no amount of AI replaces a member showing up because their friends are there and someone will notice if they don’t. So alongside the app, we’re investing heavily in more IRL: fitness challenges, social events, and moments that turn a gym membership into a community you actually belong to. The formula I’d bet on for the next five years is that combination – AI that understands you as an individual, and community that makes sure you’re not doing this alone. Brands that only build one half of that are going to struggle to hold members through the next cycle.

The UAE strongly condemned an Iranian attack targeting two vessels affiliated with state energy company ADNOC as they transited the Strait of Hormuz, the foreign ministry said in a statement.

No injuries were reported.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the attack constituted a “flagrant violation” of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2817, which affirmed the importance of freedom of navigation and rejected attacks on commercial vessels or the obstruction of international maritime routes.

The ministry said targeting commercial shipping and using the Strait of Hormuz as a tool of economic coercion or blackmail amounted to acts of piracy by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.

It added that such actions posed a direct threat to regional stability, the region’s people and global energy security.

Read: ADNOC says 15 vessels attacked in Strait of Hormuz since conflict began

Salvors with specialist vessels and other equipment are heading to waters off Oman to try to contain the environmental damage from a spill of Russian crude that has spread for weeks, the risk management firm coordinating the operation said on Thursday.

The spill from the Caroline Bezengi tanker, apparently the result of an unexplained attack on the vessel in June, has spread around a nature reserve, and hit Oman‘s coastline on Wednesday.

Risk management firm Ambrey is coordinating the salvage operation and said it had contracted a “leading international oil spill response company”, without naming it.

The response included salvage vessels, aircraft and specialists using 100 metric tons of equipment, it said.

The Caroline Bezengi, carrying an estimated 800,000 barrels of Russian oil and under international sanctions, ran aground on June 30 near an Omani marine nature reserve that is home to wildlife including humpback whales and Socotra cormorants.

An annual monsoon in the area is complicating the salvage efforts, Ambrey said.

Oman‘s agriculture, fisheries and water resources ministry said on Thursday it was monitoring the impact of the stricken tanker on sea life and on local fish products to make sure they are safe to market.

It advised fishermen to stay away from the area of the spill and report any unusual smells or noticeable changes in the water or marine life.

Tanker sailed from Black Sea port

The tanker first reported difficulties off Yemen on June 8 after what maritime sources said appeared to be a blast.

Corey Ranslem, CEO of maritime security group Dryad Global, said that damage visible in an image that Ambrey released of the grounded vessel showed burn marks indicating a fire or explosion aboard, but that it was not immediately possible to determine what caused it.

No party has claimed an attack, but the vessel was navigating two separate wars on its journey from Russia to India.

In April it sailed from the Russian port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, a flashpoint in the Russia-Ukraine war. Ukraine has carried out assaults on what is known as the shadow fleet of ageing vessels used to carry Russian oil.

The Caroline Bezengi, which is part of the shadow fleet, passed through the Suez Canal at the end of May, ship-tracking data shows. It then sailed past Yemen, where the Iran-aligned Houthi militants have entered a wider regional war between the US., Israel and Iran.