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.

For mobile, the fastest countries are United Arab Emirates, South Korea, Qatar, China, Cyprus, Norway, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Australia, and Bulgaria. For broadband, the world’s fastest countries are Monaco, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand, Romania, Switzerland, South Korea, Chile, Denmark, and Liechtenstein.

But ... an After Agents survey commissioned by Snapchat and Publicis Media among 4,000 consumers ages 13 to 49 in the US, UK, France, and Saudi Arabia found that 57% of respondents will increase AR usage post-pandemic.

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.