A booming market for phones . . .

. . . in Iraq. The NY Times reports:

The cool kids in Iraq all want an Apache, the cellphone they’ve named after an American military helicopter. Next on the scale of hipness comes a Humvee, followed by the Afendi, a Turkish word for dapper, and a sturdy, rounded Nokia known as the Allawi — a reference to the stocky former prime minister, Ayad Allawi.

Even more telling are the text messages and images that Iraqis share over their phones. . .

One of the most popular messages making the rounds appears onscreen with the image of a skeleton. “Your call cannot be completed,” it says, “because the subscriber has been bombed or kidnapped.”

Posted by David on August 8, 2006 6:14 PM