It turns out that China isn’t the only place which got blessed with the iPhone 4. UAE and Qatar were the other two lucky nations getting their latest iteration of iPhone 4. However it turns out that the Middle Eastern countries haven’t got the full iPhone 4 package.
The United Arab Emirates and Qatar luck ran out when it came to getting Facetime, the WiFi based video chat which even had Steve Jobs excited.
What’s more strange is that the slimmest smartphone does have the front facing camera and is only missing the key ingredient – FaceTime software. du and Etisalat, the UAE based iPhone carriers and Vodafone in Qatar all are selling the sleek looking handset but without Facetime. The carriers have denied playing any part in getting this feature separated from the slimmest smartphone.
So this just leaves one key suspect and that is Apple. While Apple is yet to give an official explanation for this surprising and unpleasant omission, which they should do soon enough. It is believed that Apple kept out this feature in an effort to avoid facing an unhealthy ban. The question which remains to be answered is this – will this omission affect the iPhone 4 sales in UAE and Qatar?
[via Cult of Mac]