Apple’s expanding footprint in Saudi Arabia and UAE

Apple has just announced a major expansion in the Middle East region. Saudi Arabia will get the online store in 2025 and their first retail store in 2026. UAE will see the addition of a fifth retail store.

All of this coincided with posts by Tim Cook during his visit to to Saudi Arabia and the UAE (he even watched the Abu Dhabi GP finale). Somehow, this all may have been laid out nicely when the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia had visited the Apple Park campus back in 2018.

Saudi Arabia gets online and retail love from Apple

Residents of Saudi Arabia will first get access to the online store in summer 2025. This brings the ability for anyone to place built-to-order specs and customizations for many of Apple’s products: iPhone, iPad, MacBooks, iMac, and more.

It’s the same path followed when they launched it in 2011 for the UAE, followed by the retail ones in 2015. Same goes for India, but that was during the pandemic and their first retail stores opened in 2023.

This will then be followed by several flagship retail stores across the country starting in 2026. According to Apple’s official release, While the country has so many Apple Authorized Resellers, this is their first direct retail presence in the country. The first store is in the initial stages of planning and will open in Diriyah, a UNESCO World Heritage site on the outskirts of Riyadh.

This will also debut exceptional service and support from Apple directly in Arabic for the very first time (I hope they don’t restrict it only to Saudi Arabia).

This announcement bolsters their existing investments and activities in the past few years, including the Middle East region’s first Apple Developer Academy (opened in Riyadh in 2021 in partnership with the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Tuwaiq Academy, and Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University). The all-women academy offers training for coders, designers and entrepreneurs; nearly 2,000 students have completed programming courses there.

ICYMI, the Apple Developer Academy in Riyadh can proudly add a young student to its success; she is one of the Swift Student Challenge winners (Source: Apple)

According to their official release, Apple has spent 10+ billion SAR with companies across the country. It’s not stopping there.

• The opening of the new metro earlier this month in Riyadh makes it the latest city to join the list of over 250 cities where users can ride transit with Apple Pay. 
• Riyadh is also becomes the first city in the Middle East where users can ride the metro and buses with Express Mode, a seamless and secure way to tap and pay for transit by simply holding an iPhone or Apple Watch near a reader — no need to wake or even unlock the device. 

UAE’s Fifth Retail Store

While the most recent addition to Apple’s retail footprint has been at Al Maryah Island in Abu Dhabi in 2022 (making it a total of four in the UAE), Apple has officially announced Apple Al Ain opening sometime in 2025.

Al Ain itself is an inland oasis city near the border of Oman, so that also gives the neighboring Oman the nearest road access to an Apple Store (if they prefer the long drive)..

Touting this new announcement and building on the momentum with the arrival of Apple Vision Pro in the country, Apple has shared some insights into their presence

• They’ve invested more than 6 billion AED across the UAE in the past five years.
• Developers in the UAE have earned 5 billion AED from their apps, with earnings up over 750% since 2019

Rest of the GCC?

As someone who has experienced shopping at Apple Authorized Resellers in the region, they have always been restrictive in terms of choice (I couldn’t even get a build-to-order version for a Mac) compared to when buying directly from Apple (especially from the online store when you can configure your order).

People from Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Oman will be grunting away and silently ranting on when they will have one and why it hasn’t happened yet. It all comes down to the business regulations and even commercial significance.

When Apple wanted to open their retail stores in the UAE, the country had the usual archaic law of requiring a local partner who’d also take a major share in the business. Given the clout of the brand, Apple was given an exemption (source: Cult of Mac, Apple Insider) and the rest is history.

My guess is that the next country would have to be Qatar – the country clearly stands out as another commercial pocket for Apple. When that happens, it all comes down to how the local government changes its laws to entice them to open one up (IMHO, the country can do with one mega/super branch that is a multi-story retail outlet somewhere in Doha).

Header Image Credit: Apple Newsroom