Are Middle East clients caring about user interface design and user experience yet or are they still concentrating on the eye candy?

In my opinion , clients still look for the peace of information.
Till now they don't care about UX, They love to see fabulous design on the visited website as long as they got the required information and this obvious when you check the highest ranked portal design in ME.
Also in my opinion this gonna to change soon - very fast - because searching information and navigating easily and smoothly will became #1 demand for users.
UX Will became Major factor for clients allegiance very soon.

Some of them start caring now

If the manager is knowledgeable in IT he might consider hiring a ui designer.
A few might seek a UX specialist.
But in most cases, managers only care about minimizing the development cost while insuring a "good" end product.
So the least they want to hear is someone suggesting an additional step in the dev process and some more buckets to pay!!! "Y invest in ux while users don't know about it?" They think eye candy with good development is fair enough.
Some even think simple designs, have no design in them.
So they ask the graphic designer to add more excitment to the page which terribly affects the usability.
And they don't think it is a big deal!

UX is a top discipline here in the US, especially in web and mobile app design.
Developers and marketers have been focusing on it for the past 5 years as THE most critical part of design.
The middle east market has not yet reached that stage in part because UX thrives in more creative and entrepreneurial environments and in part because most executives have not yet realized the importance of UX or Customer Experience as a discipline and full fledged function.

They still thinks that UX is UI. Therefore, whenever there is a job post for UX Designer in the end they are looking for a graphic designers. In UAE there are for now very small amount of companies which are actually aware what UX is and how it should be implemented in the designing process.