Apple’s iPhone 5 lands in Africa, Southeast Asia and the Caribbean without a splash

As the easternmost of the five Caribbean islands scheduled to get the phone on Friday, Dec. 21, St. Kitts was country No. 101 — making good Tim Cook’s pledge to sell the iPhone 5 in 100 countries by December.

But St. Kitts was not alone. I couldn’t find any coverage of the Dec. 21 launch in Barbados, Botswana, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Egypt, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, St. Lucia, St.Vincent & the Grenadines, Tunisia or Uganda, either.

But I know the last iPhone 5 launch of 2012 did occur, because I found the photograph above in a Vietnam.net post titled “Waiting from 4am to buy iPhone 5.”

Although it reports that there were line sitters and a queue that “began to grow quickly at 6:30 a.m.” — an hour and a half before the doors opened — the piece also points out that the reception for the iPhone 5 in Vietnam was not as “hot” as that for the iPhone 4 two years earlier. “In fact,” the article concludes, “the current smartphone market has many options for consumers so the iPhone is no longer a ‘phenomenon’ in the world of technology as before.”

That hasn’t stopped Apple (AAPL) from making it look like one. Lacking any fresh footage, I give you the company’s official video of the iPhone 5’s opening day:

http://youtu.be/dGC5791WKS8