In the UAE, mobile isn't "an additional channel" — it's the channel. A high share of the country's web traffic comes from phones, yet most websites are still designed on a wide designer's monitor and "adapted" to mobile at the end.
What mobile-first means in practice
It means the small screen is the first draft, not the last. Content gets ordered by its real priority because the space allows nothing else, performance is measured on mobile networks rather than office wifi, and buttons are designed for thumbs, not cursors.
In a bilingual market, starting mobile-first matters twice over: switching between Arabic and English on a small screen exposes direction and spacing problems before they reach production.
The takeaway
A website that starts mobile-first works well on big screens. The reverse is rarely true.