News

Apple’s Latest Product Releases Make The Headlines

The Duo and Pro models will hit the UAE from October. Meanwhile, the Apple Watch’s conversation-recall tools are raising consent questions.

Published

6 days ago

September 10, 2026

Nour Nasir

Apple

The iPhone Duo, Apple’s first folding phone, took the headlines this week and will reach the UAE on October 23. It refines a category Samsung opened with the Galaxy Fold in 2019. The Apple Watch’s conversation-recall features are also new territory, with consequences for people who don’t ever plan on wearing the watch.

Starting with the foldable everyone has been waiting for: the Duo sports a 5.4-inch outer display that opens into a 7.6-inch screen, with a reinforced hinge containing more than 100 components by Apple’s count. At AED 8,499, with preorders from October 16, the hotly anticipated device certainly has a lot to live up to.

The iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max (arriving September 18 from AED 5,099 and AED 5,499) have been treated to more modest upgrades. The pair get a 48-megapixel main camera with a variable aperture and separate Pro controls for aperture, shutter speed and white balance. More consequential is Apple Reference Image, which the company says preserves a photograph’s signed sensor data as a reference for checking any edited version. As convincing AI images outrun verification, that is something that’s beginning to matter to journalists and photographers.

The Apple Watch Series 12 (from AED 1,599) and Ultra 4 (from AED 3,199, with everyday battery life up to 50 hours) also arrive September 18. Later this year both gain conversation recall: Siri Recap produces summaries of what was said, and Live Rewind turns the previous 15 seconds of speech into on-screen text. Apple warns the AI-generated text may be incomplete or inaccurate.

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Both features are optional and, Apple says, do not create or retain audio recordings. Live Rewind has to be switched on deliberately and warns those nearby with a chime, a full-screen animation and a microphone indicator. Siri Recap can be started manually or scheduled by time and location; Apple’s own documentation describes it as producing a brief, high-level summary rather than a transcript, without identifying speakers, and lists no equivalent cue for the people around the wearer.

Finally, AirPods 5 bring active noise cancellation to Apple’s cheapest open-ear earbuds from September 18, at AED 539, or AED 629 with wireless charging, on-stem volume controls and longer battery life; Apple claims up to 50% more external noise blocked than AirPods 4 with ANC.

News

Egypt’s Mobile Wallets Are Booming, But Cash Still Has Power

Egypt’s telecom regulator says $57.6 billion moved through more than 57 million wallets in six months. And one operator handled 77% of the value.

Published

4 days ago

September 12, 2026

Nour Nasir

egypt's mobile wallets are booming but cash still has power

Egypt’s mobile wallets handled EGP 2.96 trillion ($57.6 billion) in transactions in the first half of 2026, according to the National Telecom Regulatory Authority – a 56% rise on the EGP 1.90 trillion ($36.9 billion) recorded a year earlier. Transactions grew faster still, up 62% to 2.22 billion, while registered wallets climbed 23% to 57.01 million.

On one reading, that is exactly what Egypt’s regulators have been pushing for: a payments system that runs through telecom-linked wallets rather than banknotes. But the same data shows how far cash still reaches into it. Cash withdrawals made up just 12% of the transactions taking money out of wallets, yet 75% of the value withdrawn or spent.

Money arrives mostly from bank accounts: transfers through InstaPay accounted for 78% of deposit transactions and 58% of the value deposited, while incoming remittances from abroad made up 3% of deposit transactions but 10% of their value. Once inside, it largely moves between wallets – wallet-to-wallet transfers accounted for 54% of all transactions and 67% of total value, with mobile and internet top-ups a distant second at 25% of volume. In effect, the wallet is serving as a transfer layer: the place money passes through between the bank account and the banknote.

That layer also runs predominantly through one operator. Vodafone Cash held 53% of registered wallets and 57% of active ones, but handled 69% of transactions and 77% of their value. Its nearest rival, e& money, held 23% of registered wallets but 14% of transaction value; Orange Cash 20% and 8%; WE Pay 4% of wallets. How many of the 57.01 million are active is not stated.

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Adoption is rather uneven in other respects. Men held 38 million wallets, or 67% of the total, against 19 million held by women. Users aged 26 to 45 accounted for half of all wallets, and Cairo alone had 10.6 million, or 19% of the national total, with Giza next at 6.5 million.

The NTRA says it is continuing to work with telecom operators on the regulatory framework for wallet services, part of a wider effort to expand electronic payments and financial inclusion. Its own figures show that effort succeeding on the way in. On the way out, three-quarters of the value still leaves as cash.