We interviewed Phil Horton, Managing Director of BMW Middle East for his insight on the brand’s readiness for the new year
Phil Horton
You are right. It has been a tough year in the market. In fact, we are at the end of November so we have few days to go. The market will be down at least 25% in the middle east overall. In what we call the premuim segment, it is pretty much the same. Having said that, at BMW, we have been very fortunate, particularly because of the strength of some of our models and particularly in that the new models. We were down overall in the whole region about 8%. Obviously better than 25% that the market shrank and in Oman particularly we were running down 5%, so were actually performing better than the whole region.
Primarily this is because of the 7-series. It coincided with the arrival of the credit crisis in the region. Because this part of the world likes big cars and novelty, we have really been saved by the arrival of the 7-series as well as BMW X5 and X6. Both continued to perform very well. Overall we are happy with the year and we are looking for some growth over the next year, 2010.
