iPhone 3G is poorly sold in Russia

A popular Apple smartphone around the world in Russia does not diverge: in the first three months of its sales, a maximum of 120,000-180,000 tubes has been sold. At such a pace of MTS, Vimpelkom and Megafon, it will not be easy to fulfill the obligation to Apple and sell 3.5 million iPhone 3G in three years, the Vedomosti newspaper writes on Monday.

In total, according to Mobile Research Group (MRG), for the IV quarter of 2008, 89,000 IPhone 3G tubes were sold in Russia. This is a little, given that the whole Russian operators pledged to purchase from Apple in the next three years 3.5 million iPhone. Of these, 1.5 million falls on Vimpelcom (should be purchased for two years) and 1 million on MTS (term - three years), the sources close to these operators told Vedomosti.

MegaFon, according to its reports for the III quarter of 2008, pledged to redeem from Apple 1 million of these phones for two years. Thus, in order to avoid losses, Vimpelkom needs to sell 187 500 iPhone to the quarter from the IV quarter of 2008, MTS - 83,300 each, and Megafon - 125,000 each.

Representatives of the cellular companies themselves say that the agreement with Apple prohibits them to disclose iPhone sales results. Apple itself also does not disclose data on the sale of products in individual countries, says its representative Betan Lyod. And managers, close to all three Russian operators, consider the MRG an assessment of low.

The reason for the low demand, according to the leading analyst of MRG, Eldar Murtazin, is the presence of a large number of gray iPhone gray devices in the hands, imported before the start of official sales; They, according to Murtazin, are about 500,000. These phones are not much different from the official iPhone 3G (except that the third generation is not maintained), the expert notes, and the legal iPhone is even worse than gray in some characteristics: for example, its case is made of plastic instead of metal.

Most retailers, for their part, also evaluate the sales of Apple phones even more modestly than MRG.

The start of the iPhone 3G legal sales in Russia was given on the night of October 2 to 3 last year. But unlike the United States, where people spent in queues for this phone for many hours, the offices of three Russian mobile operators - Vimpelcom, MTS and MegaFon (iPhone 3G distributors in Russia) - no queues for that night were observed.