Japanese app becomes a surprise hit in Kuwait

[snowcrasher]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

According to an article in the Feb 24 edition of the Nikkei, it seems Kayac Inc's Nakamap has become a surprise hit in Kuwait, exceeding downloads from Japan. Out of around 50000 downloads till Feb 23, about half are attributed to Kuwait. Why the Kuwaitis are interested remains a mystery.
Nakamap allows users to share their real-time GPS position.
Any theories?

 

[Eldiablojoe]

IIRC there was a discussion or posts regarding the existence of certain countries (mainly in middle eastern tightly regulated societies) where new adoption of iPhones by their cellular providers were going to have some features turned off. I recall GPS being one of those features. It seems, some don't want their citizenry to have too much information.

The ability of them to now access GPS via a third-party app may be exactly what they are doing.

 

[vincenz]

IIRC there was a discussion or posts regarding the existence of certain countries (mainly in middle eastern tightly regulated societies) where new adoption of iPhones by their cellular providers were going to have some features turned off. I recall GPS being one of those features. It seems, some don't want their citizenry to have too much information.

The ability of them to now access GPS via a third-party app may be exactly what they are doing.

Huh, wow you learn something new everyday.

We take our liberties for granted every single day and we have no idea.

 

[AMG]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

According to an article in the Feb 24 edition of the Nikkei, it seems Kayac Inc's Nakamap has become a surprise hit in Kuwait, exceeding downloads from Japan. Out of around 50000 downloads till Feb 23, about half are attributed to Kuwait. Why the Kuwaitis are interested remains a mystery.
Nakamap allows users to share their real-time GPS position.
Any theories?

For the same reasons Japanese download that app.