Today the Ministry of Communications in Israel un-banned the iPad for personal use and import. This reverses an earlier arbitrary ban on the device that made almost no sense to those of us who work in the computer market in Israel. It did provide the world’s news media outlets with a great light hearted way to bash Israel rather than the more usual heavy hearted ways!
The story quickly spread from the slightly bemused tech blogs who were concerned only with “what did the Israeli Ministry of Communications know about the way standard WiFi components behave when put in a new device that nobody else in the world knows?”. It is probably no accident that Haaretz kicked off the charge but once the WSJ (who I spoke to on the phone) mentioned the fact that Shimon Peres’s son holds the sole legitimate Apple import license (iDigial is their trading name) they all thought they’d found the meaning of life. Time Magazine expanded it and a blog at Fortune makes the accusation explicit: political connections allowed iDigital to block imports so they could clean up when eventually do get the device direct from Apple.
Only problem with his theory? It’s probably total nonsense and here’s why.
The iPad doesn’t have a Hebrew keyboard now and may not have for months. It took more than a year on the iPhone (even before it came to Israel). Until it has this it’s not got a chance in the mainstream market in Israel. iDigital will not be allowed to sell it by Apple till it is completely localized for Israel and right to left writing. Apple can’t even make enough for the UK or Germany today, how far down the list of priorities is Israel. Even if iDigital could have swung a ban for a week or two or even a month, I am sure there won’t be an official Israeli launch for many months. There is no chance they’d stop the few hundreds of imports that would come in until that official launch.
The Ministry decision was just a typical example of bone headed bureaucracy and clueless officials who haven’t got the first idea about that which they’ve been set to regulate.
There is plenty of political corruption going on here but this isn’t an example. If you want to bash Israel about a slow and stupid over regulatory bureaucracy you better look at your own countries as it seems to be a near universal problem.
Typed on my iPad.
