UAE and Saudi Arabia are joining the iPhone bandwagon
In a full page ad in this morning’s Gulf News, Etisalat announces that they will be brining the iPhone to the UAE at a later day. The ad reads:
The UAE’s Emirates Telecommunications Corporation - Etisalat today announced that they have signed an agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone 3G to the United Arab Emirates and to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through Mobily later this month. More information will be released at a later date.
You'll recall that neighboring Egypt disables GPS on all local and roaming iPhones as per national policy. There is no word yet on whether or not other Middle Eastern carriers are forced to do so as well. If we had to guess we'd say yay in UAE and nay in Saudi Arabia. But we don't know nothin'
اتصالات تعلن عن وصول آيفون للامارات و السعودية خلال شهر فبرير
عبر صفحة كاملة فى جريدة ” جلف نيوز Gulf News” الصادرة صباح اليوم اعلنت اتصالات عن تعاقدهم لاحضار الآيغون لدولة الامارات لاحقاً. نص العنوان كالتالى:
“شركة الامارات للاتصالات, اتصالات، اعلنت عن توقيعها لاتفاقية مع أبل لإحضار هاتف آيفون “ثري جي” الى دولة الامارات العربية المتحدة و المملكة العربية السعودية خلال شركة موبايلي فى وقت لاحق من هذا الشهر. المزيد من المعلومات سوف نتشر لاحقاً.”
هذا و كان موقع شغل جازين قد تحدث عن الشائعات التى قد تردت خلال الفترة الماضية عن قرب إعلان وصول آيفون خلال شهر فبراير و اعتقد ان ” Stuff Middle East” يجب ان يغيروا استنتاجاتهم.
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Comments (6)
GPS is already enabled in Saudi Arabia
I have been using an official unlocked iPhone 3G in Saudi Arabia for 5 months now. I am not sure an iPhone without Arabic support is going to make any sense in Saudi Arabia.
Are we going to see 2.3 software update before iPhone is launched in Saudi??
Does this mean that Apple will soon start supporting right-to-left word processing? One can only hope.
About time!
I owned an iPhone first gen since sep 2007 and I am glad I did not buy a 3G until now!
Saudi Arabia already got the app store unlike Jordan and Egypt, so the main problem is the lack of Arabic support!
Hopefully 2.3 will include support for Arabic and RTL. currently the only way to install Arabic is by jailbreaking and buying a piece of software for that.
Khaled.
Sure they'll be pickled tink
Thanks for the coverage guys, that UAE and KSA are getting iPhone officially is great news for Apple fans in both countries. Hopefully Shufflegazine can pitch in and help iPhone and Mac fans make the best use possible of them.