Apple may leave Russia because of the new bill of the Ministry of Communications of the Russian Federation
Apple may leave the Russian market due to a new project of the Ministry of Communications of the Russian Federation. The document assumes mandatory pre-installation of Russian applications on smartphones and tablets sold in Russia.
According to Vedomosti, the Russian ministry is working on amendments to the law on communications. They are in many ways reminiscent of the recent FAS project on the admission to the market of only smartphones and tablets with pre-installed Russian software. Earlier, the Ministry of Communications was skeptical about this initiative. But now the agency is preparing to submit a similar bill for public discussion in the coming days, writes Finanz.ru .
It is not yet known which software the authorities will be obliged to pre-install and to what extent. But it is already clear that a number of large foreign manufacturers are not ready to fulfill such a requirement. Among them is Apple, which does not pre—install someone else’s software on their devices. She has already hinted that she will reconsider her Russian business model if the amendments are adopted. According to the Association of Trading Companies and Manufacturers of Electrical and Computer Equipment (RATEK), because of this, domestic developers who earn on software from the Russian App Store will also suffer losses.
The situation is aggravated by another idea of the Russian authorities. They propose to give users the opportunity to remove any software from a smartphone — including applications from the manufacturer. Moreover, they want to make the deletion irreversible, so that even a rollback to factory settings will not return them. Such a requirement cannot be implemented, and therefore many manufacturers may leave Russia.
Microsoft, Intel and several other companies also spoke out against the project.
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