iPhone 4 Facetime ads hit Europe but disappearing in Middle East

Apple still can’t make enough iPhone 4 handsets to meat demand, but that’s not stopping them from ramping up the ad offensive all across Europe with 4 new FaceTime ads.

The four ads all feature the Louis Armstrong track ‘When You’re Smiling’ (which, incidentally, is now well and truly imbedded into my brain!) and cunningly not featuring text or voice. Why do I say that? No voice or text means the whole ad can be used anywhere in the world – see? Cunning.

Each ad also ends with the usual carrier logo, which gets switched around depending on which country you are viewing in – we’ve heard reports of the ads airing in at least the UK, Spain and Italy. I for one seem to be seeing them pretty much constantly.

One place you won’t be seeing any FaceTime ads is in the Middle East. Reports are circulating that many people in various countries in the region are finding FaceTime is disabled on their iPhone 4 – some even claim the feature WAS working before they updated to iOS 4.1.

Apple as yet hasn’t commented, although they did remove FaceTime from some of the promo material on some select sites last week. One of the largest network provides in the Middle East, DU, recently confirmed that their UAE customers “won’t be able to make Facetime calls, as this feature is currently unavailable”

One possibility is that Apple pulled the feature based on a false belief that it wouldn’t be allowed due to certain restrictions in the area, according to TNW.

Of course, having only used FaceTime once since the UK launch, I do have to wonder whether our Middle Eastern counterparts are really missing anything!

All four ads can be found on YouTube:

Mum’s Birthday

Football

Lion

Wedding Dress

[MacRumors]

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