See folks,
this is the kind of mess you end up with after you gleefully do a deal with the devil. According to a roundup of reports over at
Unwired View, three of Russia's major mobile operators could be looking at massive (we're talking hundreds of millions of bucks) fines if they can't sell through their iPhone allotments, and unless a significant market shift happens within the next few months, that situation seems remarkably unlikely. We're told that Vimpelcom pledged to sell 1.5 million iPhones within two years, while
Megafon committed to 1 million and
MTS the same. Today, just 900,000 iPhones have been imported to Russia, with over half entering the country via grey market channels; we'll let you figure out the math there, but it ain't pretty for Russia's carriers. Of course, we're not shocked in the least -- after getting burnt by a
bootable-but-not-usable iPhone over there, are you seriously going to give Apple another chance to win you over?
posted May 22nd 2009 2:01PM
@William.. WOW, just WOW. You missed that one.
BT = BlueTooth when you're talking limitations of the iPhone. But while on the subject, yes, there is a BitTorrent app for WM, Sym, and Java.. just sayin'
Thanks Alex...
Poor iPhone guy doesn't know about Bluetooth.... now that is just sad.
@tarex
Exactly, I think another place the iPhone is showing rather lackluster sales, wait for it...
Japan.
Of course we all know how shitty and low tech their phones are. The iPhone must just be to advanced for them to use.
So they failed to sell enough gayPhones in Russia ... maybe we just haven't enough gays here in Russia :)))
So we should put you and your 'significant other' down for two then?
No no, it's format c: /u/q. That will reset the email server matrix a lot faster. :)
maybe russians just like to communicate with vodka bottles thrown at the sea
Yeah, or WiMAX on that HTC handset they have, the lucky bastard.
But the Vodka is more likely.. because all Russians are alcoholics, right?
@berkut
I don't know much about Windows Mobile 6.5 since I don't have it installed on my phone and have only seen a few pictures of some ugly ass honeycomb interface. Even if WinMo 6.5 is esentially the same as 6.1 I really don't care. I have spb mobile shell installed on my phone which makes the interface much easier to navigate with a finger and very customizable. I really like having control of how my phone looks and behaves. If I get tired of my current interface I'm sure I can download some other skin or install some other program and completely changed the look. I was really digging the TouchFlo interface on my HTC, but now I like the spb mobile shell more. See this is what drives me to WinMo. That and not to mention countless other awesome software applications such as TCPMP, emulators, skype, skyfire, styletap (emulator for Palm), etc.
The dude holding the iPhone looks like he drinks XX (dos equis)
Glad there are so many experts on Engadget...I swear 9 out of 10 posts are from people bashing the article...a lot of anger and hatred on this site.
they gonna drink until they can navigate the capacitive screen with their brain.
I really love to see articles like this. You know, ones that present facts about the horrendous iphone sales figures overseas. It is simply delightful to see the lack of apple fan boy response because they can’t operate their keyboards as they are all too preoccupied plugging their ears, closing their eyes, and chanting at the top of their lungs “Steve Jobs is my master and Apple iPhone sales is better than the competition’s!”. I mean really, lets face it, the US is the one and only market the iPhone is doing well in and that is only because the general US consumer is an idiot and has never used any other “real” Smartphone platform before (proof that Apple’s marketing team can sell anything shiny to the typical ignorant / inexperienced American consumer). Obviously they can’t sell them in Russia and in Japan they can’t even give them away. Pathetic isn’t it? As others have said the iphone is a joke to the overseas markets because they have tasted of the goods that the more powerful/flexible platforms have to offer and they have become accustom to the far superior feature sets offered by these platforms (most notably Symbian and Windows Mobile). However, I must give credit where credit is due. Apple revolutionized the touch screen phone market and their UI is extremely intuitive. The app store also put the industry into frenzy because it is the first time that phone software has been centralized into a central location for easy OTA downloading. Although these were great innovations for the industry, it does not make up for the ridiculous shortcomings of the apple iphone platform as a whole. The app store is no longer a unique feature of the iphone as Android has the android market place, Windows mobile has a consolidated app store coming online from Microsoft, and Nokia will be rolling out the OVI store soon. Additionally, the UI advantage is crumbling as we speak; When Palm rolls out the PRE and apple does nothing to protect it’s “intellectual property” for fear of a counter suite from palm (Palm holds a much stronger patent portfolio as it relates to mobile devices) the rest of the industry will go right ahead and integrate the very same “multi-touch” functionality into their platforms as apple currently offers on the iphone. As these major “apple innovations” become common place apple will begin to loose market share in their only strong market (the USA) because not only will the compotation have all the features that set apple apart from the rest at this specific moment but the competition will also have the far soupier base platform.
Peace,
Slice
P.S. Additionally with regards to the Apple Appstore; I’d say that the app store is more full of crap applications (gimmicky bull crap like drinking a
oops, i cut of my P.S. on my post and this commenting system sucks the big one because i can not edit my comment.
P.S. Additionally with regards to the Apple Appstore; I’d say that the app store is more full of crap applications (gimmicky bull crap like drinking a beer on the iphone) than actual apps that have “real” functionality and purpose.
Disclaimer: I live in Russia, so I actually have a clue.
1) Apple brought only iPhone 3G to Russia, like a year late, at that time gray exports of iPhone 1st generation were like 500K. So everyone who really wanted them - got them via gray market.
2) 3G is almost non-existant in Russia, because frequencies are used by military agencies. We have more WiMax than 3G now. Advertising of new fancy 3G capabilities of iPhone looks like a bad joke to average user.
3) All phones here are sold unlocked, Russians are not used to operator-locked phones.
4) We have huge amount of WinMO / Symbian phones on market, same price or even cheaper than iPhone. Here iPhone looks like a shiny overpriced toy, not a real smartphone.
5) iPhone 3G is sold at around 20-21K roubles now - that's about 700 USD. More than average monthly salary.
6) There were very little advertising as compared to USA.
While riding every day in Moscow subway I can see lots and lots of kids with iphones 1st generation (imported via gray market), very little "official" iPhones 3G.
By the way.
The picture here is of Russia's ex-President V. Putin (now prime-minister) while tagging tranquilized wild tiger with GLONASS (Russian GPS system) marker.
Guys, don't argue regarding that point too much. Its a cluster f..ck! :) Iphone is overpriced in Russia, that's why grey market has a demand. This happened because the cell operators did not get discounts from Apple, and has to sell it for about 23k RR. Which is now about 750 USd, and was about a 1k USD before. And all other brands has soo many phones which are much cheaper, so people do not want to buy such an expensive official phone which also need to be always connected to the computer, Apple shop and has a steady supply of digital content, they either buy a grey one if they have all that, or do not buy it all. Just for comparison even Ipod touch II with the same memory costs in Moscow about 12K RR, which is about 400 USD. Soo they artificially limited the phone to the top of the market, where you have a very strong representation of real business phones for those who wants business potential, and Vertu, Mobiado e t.c. for those who want to show up. That led to a complete disaster with sales.
Besides you know nothing about the fact that Apple was not selling them in Russia for a year after they've started world sales, thus creating grey market, which satisfied the initial demand, and after they agreed to supply it at no discount in a year and a half and made the operators sign the contract which was a failure from the very beginning. Apple did not give a shit about Russia - Russia did not give a shit about Apple.
Believe me, I am a Moscowite! :)
Tiger tracking, there's even an App for that!