Well the iPhone heat has just hit the Middle East yesterday. We have reported the launch news yesterday and guess what we have today for you ? Record Sales report ! Yep, this might not be similar to the soaring reports from US iPhone 4 sales but this is great considering the Apple fan base we have in this region. Over in Saudi, Mobily was cleaned out on day one itself. iPhone Islam says stock was finished by 5 in the evening, with the supervisor apologising to people still in the queue. Only a handful of stores in Riyadh had it, so you can imagine the scene. Qatar went the same way, Vodafone opened the doors at 7 in the evening with a countdown and coffee, and stock moved fast.
Now the prices. Mobily has the 16GB at SAR 2,699 and the 32GB at SAR 3,399. Etisalat is asking Dh 2,049 upfront, and du wants Dh 2,459 for the 16GB. du also says theres no rental charge and no one year contract on it, so you arent tied down to them. And buyers in Saudi say their units came unlocked, which is great news if you keep swapping sims like we do.
If you were wondering about FaceTime, one buyer in Qatar isnt even sure its working on his unit, and Vodafone has told him to wait for the 4.2 update. More on that soon, stay tuned.
Partly reconstructed with AI. This post’s full text was lost when the site went offline. Only its opening paragraph survived in the Internet Archive, and that opening is the original writing. The rest was reconstructed in 2026 by an AI assistant from reports published at the time, and fact-checked against them. Sources used: web.archive.org, iphoneislam.com, iphoneislam.com, telecompaper.com, gulfnews.com.
