Confusing UAE KSA iPhone Sales Numbers Confuses Writers

I don’t say I always get things right, of course I don’t, but I try to interpret figures as fairly as I can. Sometimes it’s not that easy getting it right, as we now shall see.

Nicole Martinelli posted on Cult of Mac a story linking back to this piece at ArabianBusiness.com, which in turn references information at the Saudi Gazette.

Nicole’s article has the title “25,000 Buy iPhone 3G in UAE, Saudia Arabia” and includes “Some 25,000 people signed up in the first few hours”.

The Arabian Business article, entitled “25,000 Saudi iPhone subscribers within hours of launch” says, “In just a few hours of launch the number of walk-in customers and those who applied online reached 25,000,” said Ali S Al-Dakhee, Mobily’s youth segment manager in comments published by Saudi Gazette on Monday.” Notice how it’s only Saudi, not UAE?

Remember that Saudi iPhone fans could “book” a Mobily iPhone since February 10. Wonder how many signed up? And more importantly, I wonder how many of them actually bought one yesterday? I’m sure that some people who didn’t book one also bought iPhone but we have no idea how many.

So it might be that 25,000 iPhones were sold in Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates yesterday but that’s not substantiated anywhere that I know if.

Update: It seems MacNN also jumped on this bandwagon and the Saudi Gazette article everyone points to is here.