"Russian iPhone" with GLONASS finally failed in Russia, the Chinese decided not to let them out anymore

The Chinese company ZTE, which produces the world's first GLONASS-Smartphone (aka Russian iPhone from MTS), stopped the production of these devices due to lack of demand. For the same reason, he abandoned the plans for launching a smartphone, the only advantage of which will be GLONASS support, and another Chinese giant - Huawei, reportsCNews.ru .

The publication recalls that presenting to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at the end of 2010 his “Russian iPhone, released ZTE based on the Chipset of the American Qualcomm chipset, the chairman of the Board of Directors of the AFK System Vladimir Yevtushenkov spoke about the volume of supplies of the first batch of 500 thousand pieces. Later, ZTE representatives adjusted this figure up to about 100 thousand. things.

However, MTS 945 GLONASS, which for some reason called the IPhone "Russian counterpart", the buyers met completely indifferently. The real volume of the first batch did not exceed 5 thousand pieces, and in order to sell so much, MTS took six months. Prior to the start of sales, ZTE hoped to bring 3-5 models of such devices to the market, but a month after the start of sales, these plans became less defined.

This apparatus, which is a typical budget android telephone, could be interesting primarily by the presence of a combined GLONASS/GPS receiver and did not attract buyers at all. At a starting cost of 11 thousand rubles, MTS 945 Glonass was inferior in other characteristics to many models for 6-8 thousand. There were even assumptions that the main task of the appearance of this device is to show that Glonass is generally working.

Now the ZTE general manager for Russia Din Haomin says that the company is not preparing new models of smartphones with the support of GLONASS for any of the Russian operators. According to him, this is due to the lack of demand for such devices among Russian consumers.

A year ago, sources at Qualcomm said that Huawei is also developing such a device, but now it turned out that it also revised these plans.

In 2011, GLONASS support began to appear in the specifications of new models of smartphones of a number of manufacturers (Samsung, Apple, Motorola, Sony Ericsson), but none of the manufacturers had any more accent on this function.

Theoretically, GLONASS is already supporting dozens of smartphone models: the ability to process the signal of the Russian satellite system is laid down in the latest generations of platforms of the largest supplier of mobile microelectronics - Qualcomm. Last year, chipsets with a similar function were released by the main rival of this company - Broadcom. However, for real use of the GLONASS signal in devices based on such chipsets, a modification from the manufacturer of the smartphone is required.