Etisalat UAE iPhone Details Revealed, Start Selling Sunday February 22

We should take actions aginst etisalat .like have a day to stop using there phones to make them rethink about there prices .look at there's offers in Saudis Arabia and Egypt

I love the way Dubai is trying to make it as expensive as possible. These prices are right on the border. The only difference I see between an import price and Etisalate's price is that you probably get a warranty through Etisalate.

The US are doing the right thing by lowering the cost to the point where they can maximise the number of people with a phone - not maximise the amount of money you can get out of each person.

Typical Dubai.

Sadly this way of thinking is rubbing off on pretty much everyone working in Dubai. They are all there for themselves to make money at that individual moment (no matter how).

I think Dubai has a lot of problems ahead long term.

First of all Etisalat is a late entry for the show. I can loundly say that there are already many users of iphone in Dubai who have bought the phone either from grey market or have them bought via online bidding sites like souq.com or bazaar.ae. I dont know what kind of marketing home work was done by etisalat marketing team before introducing the phone with such ridiculous high plans. They could have sold more phones and would have tempted more customers with comparatively low costing data plans. I initially thought that etisalat would close the pipe for iphones coming through grey market after its introduction of legitimate phone ( Data Plans ) but i can cleary see now that have scared away even those few poeple who were looking forward to buy a phone from etisalat.

An as far as using the phone to its full capacity i personally think that you dont require 3G ( which is way costly in UAE ) and thus you do not require the ghastly costly data plan's for iphone, Dubai's infact the whole emirates have got hotspots scattered everywhere infact even if you sit in a bus parked at deira stand and you search for wireless access points and you may still find a lot of them free wifis easily and thats what is all required for having a good browsing experience of checkin your mails on the go.

I would prefer iphones available in the market 100 times over the phone available at etisalat stores. I have been using an iphone since a year now in dubai and have been using it to its full capacity & for that believe me you do not require expensive data plans over 3G.................

We all have got brains........use em. If you are cutting over your houshold quota just to buy this coveted phone i would say BAD IDEA , the best thing is to wait and see etisalat will surely bring down the prices or they might not even cosidering the fact that after so many years still there international calls are way expensive but what ever happens we still have good phones available in the market thanks to GREY MARKET Importers and suppliers........

CHEERS.

At this point data plans look silly. Does it mean I can pay for the phone upfront and still not afford the 2GB data plan? Etisalat's site still doesn't publish any information - grr - so we're not sure if that's the case.

A lousy way to launch a brilliant device. Data plans at 2GB cap don't make me want to go out there and buy one for all my staff. Poor.

Suppose I buy one with AED 0 plan and 643/mo for 1 year. How much do I pay after that? same amount every month? Any ideas magnus?

I think 500 MB is too less for an iPhone but 2GB which should be barely enough is expensive.

My guess is you keep paying 643 if you want to stay on that plan after 12 months, but since the contract is over you can cancel at any time. Within the 12 months if you want to cancel there is probably a penalty whereby you'd have to pay the full remaining amount or at least a large part of it. We'll see if more details become available today.

Saudi Arabia's Mobily prices are more annoying, with a huge data plan of 199MB!!
http://twurl.nl/mdw4cq

>>magnus...even if i get with plan 1 buy the device for 2640 and consider the 199 dhs for the voice call data n sms....still the price of iphone in black market is yet cheaper ....but yeah no warranty!

The price is just too high and monthly limit for voice and data is too low... you are bound to go over the limit every month if you use iPhone to its full capacity (considering its web browsing features). And if you are not using iPhone to its full capacity then you probably don't need an iPhone at first place.

According to the pricing details the phones are under contract! I guess most probably they will be locked if not then its good. But if my calculations are not wrong, suppose you buy the 8gb model with plan 4 for free and every month have to pay 624 Dhs that means we end up pay around 7K Dhs by end of 12 monthz! then its really expensive ! please correct if am wrong :)

But even with a gray market iPhone you have to pay for voice, data, and SMS. The monthly fee includes voice/data/sms so the comparison is not fair.

With all the iPhones already available in the Dubai market for much lower prices i don't really see this as a big success-story in the making.
But who knows, we will see what happens.
Maybe du also brings the iPhone out later as there is no exclusive deal here in UAE.
It really gets interesting once the new version comes in June/ July or so...