Did Apple purposely allow Iphone's to flood other markets (Like in the middle east?)

After my post yesterday, regarding how to import Iphone's at the retail price. There has been a discussion on the comments and twitter around the post.




Riy & Justin say you are not allowed to order from the US store with a non US credit card, this surprised me since for me and several other people it works. As long as you have a US based address. This got me thinking though since Riy said he tried to order the IPhone online but could not due to him not having a US credit card.

Could it be possible that they blocked non us credit cards initially? And once they knew the 3G Iphone was going to be launched soon they allowed international credit cards?

That would explain, the fact for the last 6 months of 2007 you could not get your hands on an IPhone here in Dubai, but since January the market has been practically flooded. Almost every mobile store had large amounts of Iphone stock.

Did Apple make the change, allowing non US credit cards to purchase stock online knowing that this would lead to tons of phones being imported into markets that did not have the phone officially? Put in another way, did they purposely turn a blind eye to this, so they could 'Dump' the soon to be obsolete stock to meet sales targets?

It would be interesting to know if anyone else tried to buy the phone online with a non us credit card sometime last year and was unsuccessful, post back on the comments or on twitter with the approximate date that you tried.

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