PS3 controls 59% market share of UAE

[truthiness]

Errr, there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding about social studies here.

First of all, the nth world terms are not directly related to "bloc affiliation." They happen to line up pretty well, but they are not the same thing. First world countries are countries where both social services and personal income/relative quality of life are high. Western countries in Europe and the Americas often fall in here due to the very low incidence of disease and easily treatable infections and also because of a relatively high income and quality of life.Second world countries, such as the Soviet commonwealth countries have similarly low rates of disease and bad health, but lag far behind in income and relative standard of living. Finally, third world countries achieve low in both categories most often because of a lack of economic development. The fact that they were ignored by the Western powers in political terms has more to do with a lack of social and economic capital than it has to do with some kind of static social factor.

Dubai and many countries in the middle east are often considered third world countries because though there many in the population who have a very very very high standard of living and health, much of the population lives in conditions that would classify the country as a third world environment. To put this in perspective notice that the royal family of Saudi Arabia's personal income dwarfs the salaries that most people can expect to live. In the case of Dubai, this is even more extreme as there is a relatively small domestic population (the majority of Dubai's population are either transient workers or do not maintain their main residence in the country. Though much of the UAE is not the same as Dubai, it is roughly comparable to say that a similar situation arises. A relatively small elite and powerful rich skew the per capita income to a much higher level than if a modal salary were taken.

In sum: the UAE is a rising power, but to believe that they already are a modern function first world country is to ignore the fact that behind all of the fancy buildings and cities growing up in the emirates, there are a whole heck of a lot of people whose quality of life isn't much better than it was 50 years ago.

Now back to marveling about these poor poor countries and their lowly PS2s.