The news: Apple won’t offer its "Private Relay" encrypted web browsing in China, Saudi Arabia, and a handful of other countries due to regulatory restrictions, further complicating the company’s commitment to personal privacy, per Reuters. For context, the Private Relay is essentially Apple’s version of a VPN that prevents anyone, even a user’s ISP, from tracking their browsing history.

The online population in UAE, like Saudi Arabia, is chiefly composed of archetypal early adopters with established digital habits. Males and city dwellers make up a large part of the online population in UAE. Given those skews, it’s not surprising to find high levels of engagement with digital devices and activities.

This year, several countries—including France, India, Saudi Arabia, and the US—posted markedly greater usage; many others—including Italy, Malaysia, and the UK—saw minimal or no growth. And in some countries—including Ireland, Japan, and Vietnam—voice search was less widespread than last year. Researchers also reported some notable age- and gender-related shifts in voice search.

According to data from SimilarWeb cited by Campaign Middle East, TikTok ranked third in the Apple App Store and fifth in the Google Play Store in Saudi Arabia. In the United Arab Emirates (UAE), it was sixth in the Apple store and third in the Google store. In Oman, it was fourth in the Apple store and third again in the Google store.

Half of the world’s top 10 fastest-growing countries for Facebook are in this region: Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia. The Middle East and Africa Pushes Ahead of North America in an Important Metric. As in other regions, we have upgraded our forecast for Facebook users in the Middle East and Africa.

According to data from Northwestern University in Qatar, Twitter usage dropped by half between 2013 and 2019 among Arab nationals in key countries surveyed (Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates). Key Takeaways. Twitter’s worldwide audience increased in 2020 as a result of greater social network usage during the pandemic.

Speaking with Arab News in August 2020, Hussein Freijeh, general manager of Snap in the Middle East and North Africa, explained that the platform reached large proportions of 13- to 24-year-olds in countries like the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, and that the pandemic meant that “the need for people to communicate increased massively.

Other countries demonstrating rapid growth in 2020 include Spain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, India, and Finland. Notably, the top 10 rates of increase in 2020 are almost all a good deal higher than the top 10 rates in 2019—another sign of just how much the pandemic has propelled social networking in recent months. The Mobile Shift in Social Networking Will Continue.