Stuff Magazine Refutes February Launch Date For iPhone Rumored on EmiratesMac.com

Apparently Paddy Smith (look in the right sidebar for Author information) <strike>someone, it doesn’t say who the author is,</strike> over at Stuff Magazine Middle East has found it important to comment on rumors about the possibility that iPhone will launch in UAE in February. They link to a one-year old thread on EmiratesMac.com and try to present their view of why the rumors are not true. As we’ve noted before, Shufflegazine doesn’t know whether the rumors are true or not but we don’t believe so because of Stuff’s arguments. It’s annoying that Stuff publishes something like this without apparently doing the proper background research.

1. There is still no indication that the iPhone even exists on the local website.

Doesn’t surprise us. Usually they update the site long after something new has launched it seems.

2. Apple’s international site mentions forthcoming launches in Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Indonesia and Qatar – yet no mention of the UAE. And Qatar’s been on there since June last year.

All very true. We don’t think that speaks against believing the rumors though, Apple likes doing things their own way and that way is not always the expected way.

3. For a product that has thrived on advance publicity, it would be an odd decision not to publicise the launch well ahead of time. Let’s face it, you don’t run a viral campaign off EmiratesMac. (Sorry, guys.)

And you would run a viral campaign off Stuff, would you? We understand that you’d go to Stuff to look at half-naked ladies, but really, would you go there to read stuff (!) about Apple products from writers who are excited about them, have used them, and try to share their views about them? Better check out the only Apple User Group in the UAE – EmiratesMac.com – or perhaps Shufflegazine.

4. February 14? So the announcement can be buried in Valentine’s Day hype, then trodden into the mud by the slew of new phones expected at Mobile World Congress, which starts on the 16th. Great plan.

The Mobile World Congress? Who has heard of that (other than Stuff)? Well, it might be an important event on the calendar on the Stuff kitchen-nook wall, but for all the thousands of people in the UAE and the wider Middle East that are bursting with excitement about the possibility that iPhone will launch here, it doesn’t matter at all.

And if the iPhone starts to sell on February 14, what better Valentine’s Day present can you think of than an iPhone? I bet you even Stuff staff will go out and buy it even on the most romantic of days.

5. Even though Apple’s spokeswoman was tight-lipped with the details, she also wouldn’t tell us whether the iPhone was being considered (the old line was that ABM had ‘no plans’ to bring the iPhone to the UAE). And she avoided questions about the government decree saying that both carriers would have to offer the phone to avoid a monopoly. In other words, it didn’t look like she was trying to hide anything. She just didn’t want to comment; it’s a regular event in the Middle East.

Tight-lipped? You don’t say? Note to Stuff: she’s not “Apple’s spokeswoman”. We think she does her best in the jungle-like PR environment Apple Europe creates for ABM. How many times have we not heard that ABM has “no comment” or “no plans” about iPhone and other things? We’d be much more surprised if you got any other comment from them even if iPhone was launching tomorrow.

6. EmiratesMac puts it in a section called ‘Unconfirmed Rumours’, which is a tautology.

We’ll leave that one to the EmiratesMac guys to pick up and run with, they’re more than capable of taking care of their community as shown by many past examples. Bring out the tar and feathers!

Let us conclude by saying that it seems Stuff has gone out of their way to write a piece founded on nothing more than the rumors they seem so set on not believing in. Funny that, isn’t it? Could it be that they want to generate (badly needed?) traffic to their blog?