"I'm going to grab the Nokia option, it seems more of a business phone than Apple," said Wiam Nabulsi, an account manager at an advertising agency in Dubai.
BlackBerry handsets are popular among business people and professionals in the United Arab Emirates, a wealthy oil exporter that includes the Gulf Arab financial hub Dubai.
It also has a following among the young and wealthy, with students choosing the device for its user-friendly chat option.
The UAE said on Sunday it planned to suspend BlackBerry e-mail, web browsing and Messenger services from October 11 unless the maker, Research In Motion, allows it access to encrypted messages. On Tuesday, top service provider Emirates Telecommunications Corp (Etisalat), which is partly government-owned, began offering free handsets and discounted service packages to prompt users to switch.
As well as Apple, it has offered phones from Samsung, Nokia and LG and plans to have contracts for the new offers available soon.
Rival provider du telecom, in which the government also has a stake, plans similar offers and is set to detail them on Wednesday.
Nawwar Nashawati, who owns an events and concierge services firm, said one challenge would be explaining to overseas visitors why their BlackBerry roaming services would be limited once they land in the UAE.
"But if we want to be on the safe side, we just have to stick to whatever Etisalat is offering us. We can't risk being disconnected again," Nashawati said.
Kuwait has asked RIM to block pornographic sites though will not suspend services like other Gulf states have threatened to do, a local newspaper reported on Tuesday.
RIM has given "initial approval" to block 3,000 porn sites at the request of Kuwait's Communications Ministry, the Al-Jarida daily said, quoting a source it did not identify by name.
It said the Canadian manufacturer asked the ministry to give it until the end of the year to implement the block.
Separately, RIM has agreed to give India's security authorities the right to monitor e-mail sent and received on the smartphone, an Indian newspaper reported on Tuesday.
The Al-Jarida report said security was also part of the Kuwaiti negotiations.
It said Kuwait was working with RIM and local telecom companies to reach a set of "legal controls that would guarantee national security on the one hand, and the rights of citizens ...to use the device's services on the other."
Combined, the Gulf states and India represent more than 2 million BlackBerry users, or about 5 percent of the 41 million devices in service worldwide.
RIM's Nasdaq-listed shares fell as much as 2.7 percent before closing down 0.96 percent at $56.98 on Monday in New York, hurt in part by concerns over the risk that the UAE's ban might spread to other countries, according to analysts.
Meanwhile, the BlackBerry doesn't offer 100 percent protection from eavesdropping. At least not in the United States.
US law enforcement officials said they can tap into e-mails and other conversations made using the device, made by RIM, as long as they have proper court orders.
RIM's willingness to grant authorities access to the messages of its clients is a hot-button issue.
"The ability to tap communications is a part of surveillance and intelligence and law enforcement all over the world," said Mark Rasch, former head of the computer crimes unit at the US Department of Justice.
