12 ms·

All three major Russian carriers dump iPhone

207 points by yread 13y ago

surge 13y ago
I wonder how much of it's related to fears that every iPhone is a secret NSA listening device? I mean if you knew the KGB could possibly listen in on your phones, how likely would US carriers keep it? I've been thinking an overseas consumer and business/government backlash against US technology products is inevitable now that the NSA being in bed with every major US technology company is public knowledge.
- stephengillie 13y ago
  What phone isn't? Is even cyanogenmod safe from the NSA?
  - rthomas6 13y ago
    Well, if you don't use Google Apps with it, then yeah probably.
    - CedarMadness 13y ago
      You still have the radio firmware, which is closed source and can't be changed. That's where I'd expect snooping back doors to be located.
      - surge 13y ago
        Well most of the firmware is written by an Asian company, doesn't put it outside the realm of possibility.
  - mtgx 13y ago
    I think so, since it's fully community made, and beyond the "official" CyanogenMod team, there are hundreds more developers making "unofficial" CM ROMs for other phones, and they get to see the code, too. Plus, the CyanogenMod team is now working on encrypted end-to-end messaging that is built-in: https://plus.google.com/+CyanogenMod/posts/23vfN2qdZTu https://plus.google.com/+CyanogenMod/posts/23vfN2qdZTu
    - superuser2 13y ago
      No, it's not, because everything useful that happens with your phone happens over a carrier network or the internet, both of which are available to the NSA. End-to-end encrypted messaging is a good sign, but it doesn't matter how "community made" your endpoints are - the NSA has the network.
      - mtgx 13y ago
        Yes, but if the communication is encrypted it doesn't really matter. So these text messages should be by and large safe. I agree about the voice calling, though, which is why I'd like them to use RedPhone as the default dial app, too, so at least you can have encrypted voice conversations when connected to the Internet.
    - abruzzi 13y ago
      Perhaps, but voice calls, and SMS all go through the carrier. While russian carriers don't have to provide data to the NSA, the probably do to the FSB. Yes you can make apps the communicate via encrypted channels, but that requires the same app at both ends, and ultimately I suspect apps are secondary for most people. Voice and SMS are the primary function of phones still.
- mitchty 13y ago
  If that were the case then why are Russians buying Microsoft phones too? Sorry doesn't pan out as an acceptable reasoning.
- Kurtz79 13y ago
  Seriously, unlike 99% of hackernews users, if the average smartphone user even knows what PRISM is, he/she probably doesn't give a damn. And carriers go where the money is. This sounds like a purely economics driven decision.
  - surge 13y ago
    Well, if people over hear heard something like the KGB can spy on people who use Russian tech company products, people would avoid them even if it isn't necessarily true. Supposedly, the encryption iOS implements is supposed to be NSA proof. But public perception and consumer confidence in a product is everything. Reddit talks about it as much if not more so then Hacker News on the common front page reddits and I've seen quite a bit of griping about it from non-techie friends on FB. I think its very likely the contractual disagreement, but I'd be very interested to know if sales for US-based technology products have fallen since recent revelations came to light.
    - PeterisP 13y ago
      Come on - people overhearing that "KGB can spy on people using X" would not change anything, it is expected and well known that KGB/FSB can spy on you no matter what equipment you use; heck, if you're a political activist or interesting to the politically connected megacompanies, then you may have microphones in your house (no matter if your phone is "safe") and physical keyloggers in your keyboard cable (no matter if your software is "safe"). In that environment, you aren't surprised by backdoors, you treat them as a natural part of life. ALL things have backdoors, no matter who made them, so for individuals (not army/gov't purchases) that isn't a factor, you just choose whichever device you like. If they're not spying on you, then backdoors don't matter; and if they're spying on you, then they'll get the backdoor in anyways. If it didn't have backdoors at manufacturing time then it may have backdoors by the time it's sold to you. If the device didn't have backdoors when arriving at your house, well, it might have been installed yesterday. Americans could/should be surprised, but not Russians.
gcb0 13y ago
Any one care to tell us how good/bad is a market that outlaws phone subsidies? Is there better competition on service quality and cost or does it end up being just the same?
- ak0s 13y ago
  Unlimited mobile internet is $13(Beeline) — $20 (MTS) per month in Moscow region. Quality is far from good, can't compare to other countries though.
- tikhonj 13y ago
  My impression from visiting there a couple of times is that there is much more healthy competition among phone companies. It is very easy just to buy whatever SIM card you want--I could just walk into one of many phone stores and get one for my trip. There was also quite a bit more advertising for the bigger brands, which leads me to believe they have to work harder to acquire and keep customers. Dealing with phones and SIM cards there was much nicer than in the US, but that isn't saying very much! The US phone market is a complete mess. That said, I have no idea how much the law about phone subsidies helps this.
  - xentronium 13y ago
    > There was also quite a bit more advertising for the bigger brands, which leads me to believe they have to work harder to acquire and keep customers Nah, don't be fooled. Most of the time, The Big Three (MTS, Beeline, Megafon) have almost identical pricing. They have been under regulatory scrutiny for price fixing more than once. Besides, there are several ridiculous features here (like inter-regional roaming, when you pay significantly more in different cities). However, it's really easy to buy a sim card, and that's what many people do, they have a Moscow SIM card and a Saint Petersburg SIM card. Quality of data connection is usually about average, could be better, could be worse. FWIW, I live in a small city (<300k pop).
- mtgx 13y ago
  Yes, much better when there are none or very little phone subsidies. They actually compete on services. Unfortunately, since the iPhone, carriers in many countries have started adopting a very similar subsidy program to the one in US, and the value/buck has done downhill since then. But the pre-paid market is still alive and well at least, and you can get a ton of minutes and data for small prices.
neonhomer 13y ago
FTA "which has helped enable the Microsoft OS to overtake iOS, gaining 8.3% of smartphone sales compared to 8.2% for Apple" So maybe windows phone will actually become a competitor to android in russia?
- ak0s 13y ago
  Not yet. The most popular shop Svyaznoy seems like promoting however.
- mcintyre1994 13y ago
  Unless they have a very loose definition of smartphone or I'm missing something, it doesn't sound like anything is competitive with Android in Russia?
ak0s 13y ago
Not a single Russian iPhone user I know bought it in carrier store. Mostly they've got it from Europe trips, others in non-official stores where prices 15-20% lower. So, despite official sales numbers are low, there is a remarkable iPhone user base here.
roc 13y ago
If the iPhone is considered "expensive" due "high import taxes" at $920, how is it selling on the black market for $3500?
- textminer 13y ago
  Traditional well-regulated customer-supporting carriers don't have the margins that black market dealers do?
  - roc 13y ago
    But if you can buy it from the carriers more cheaply than the black market, who would pay more than triple that to the black market? They're not carrier-locked, when purchased direct from Apple for $920, are they? And if they're selling for $3500 on the black market, exactly how "expensive" can they be, at $920, let alone how could they be "expensive" due the import taxes that result in an official product that's less than one-third the price of the illegal product that skirts those taxes?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- mkevac 13y ago
  $3500 is a price for a iPhone on a next day after it is released in US. After that price gradually decreases.
- bayesianhorse 13y ago
  Distributing iPhones at scale for $920 is a different beast than selling a couple of them for $3500. In the latter case, the costs per iPhone for the seller are much higher. The game for selling $920 iPhones is "find a price point were demand times price minus cost is maximized". The game in the black market is "find the highest price point at which the inventory sells out quickly enough".
  - roc 13y ago
    But who would buy them for $3500? If the price of a black market iPhone is higher than that of the legal-market iPhone, with any regularity, it suggests that $920 isn't a problem, let alone the import tax portion of that: supply must be the problem. And if the price only hit $3500 in a couple rare situations (errors, morons), I'm not sure why they even brought it up as if it were common, as that fact completely undercuts the argument about the iPhone being too expensive.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
xentronium 13y ago
http://shop.beeline.ru/msk/iphones http://shop.beeline.ru/msk/iphones this is weird. Maybe they haven't updated their site though.
guard-of-terra 13y ago
People around me link this to official Apple Store opening. You can now order iPhone there over the internet, carriers can't realistically compete with this because they'll lose money selling for less that Apple Store and sell zero phones selling for more. (I've never owned nor bought anything from Apple)
- fvrghl 13y ago
  The carriers sell the phones for less and make money back through the service plan. That's the basic model for carriers offering phone subsidies.
  - muyuu 13y ago
    Not sure about Russia, but in other countries there are tight regulations for phone subsidies (treating them for what they are: dumping of retail price with the purpose of locking in users - a blatantly anticompetitive practice that would be illegal in most industries). Strong competition has a similar effect. If the SIM free contracts are good enough, people are not going to get into lengthy, expensive contracts. This doesn't happen in places like the US because there's a very strong cartel/oligopoly there that affords them the right to simply deny you a terminal if it's not under the carrier's conditions. If Apple is selling for cheaper than the carriers can afford to sell, then they will simply do what they are doing: stop selling it.
    - jdminhbg 13y ago
      > dumping of retail price with the purpose of locking in users - a blatantly anticompetitive practice that would be illegal in most industries What? There are scores of industries that use loss-leaders to get customers to commit to long-term contracts. Razors, satellite/cable TV, etc. > This doesn't happen in places like the US because there's a very strong cartel/oligopoly there that affords them the right to simply deny you a terminal if it's not under the carrier's conditions. This isn't true at all, and I don't know why you would think it was. Here's a counterexample: https://ting.com/ https://ting.com/
gtrubetskoy 13y ago
"Apple dumps all three major Russian carriers" is how I would read this heading. Everyone I know in Russia has or wants an iPhone, Apple isn't losing any market share there, because you can get an iPhone from Apple directly.
- gdy 13y ago
  Yep, we have our share of Apple funboys here in Russia)
isalmon 13y ago
>> Russia has over 180m mobile subscribers The whole population is 143M (2011) including infants and very old people. How is it possible? Multiple phones per person?
- mhurron 13y ago
  Business and personal phones? Lots of 'Russian Business' around the web.
- mynegation 13y ago
  Several factors: people use separate phones for business (paid by employer usually) and personal calls, often people have phones from different operators, because of significant discount for calls within the same network, illegal immigrants that do not get counted in the census also own mobile phones (sometimes several phones, like I mentioned)
- tucaz 13y ago
  Brazil has around 190 million people[1] with about 249 million mobile phone lines enabled [2]. People that have more than one line usually buy one line from each provider so they can talk "for free" between the same providers. It is not uncommon for people to ask you what is your provider so they will mark it and call from a phone that uses that provider when trying to reach you. We also have a high number of people with phones that allow multiple providers with one device. Business and personal cellphones are not uncommon either. [1] http://www.ibge.gov.br/home/estatistica/populacao/censo2010/default.shtm http://www.ibge.gov.br/home/estatistica/populacao/censo2010/... [2] http://extra.globo.com/noticias/celular-e-tecnologia/quinto-pais-no-numero-de-celulares-brasil-pode-subir-ainda-mais-no-ranking-com-desoneracao-de-smartphones-8123620.html http://extra.globo.com/noticias/celular-e-tecnologia/quinto-...
  - speeder 13y ago
    To make a example as brazillian: My close family is 4 people (my dad, mom, me, sister). We have 6 lines from one carrier (we got it in a special package, we use 1 line per person + 2 backup lines for whatever we need, since those lines can call very cheap each other, one use for backup line for example is borrow it to extended family) Also my dad has one workplace line with another carrier, and a Nextel Android. And I had for a while a extra line to communicate cheaply with people of the same carrier, thus in total we have 9 mobile phone lines for 4 people. Sometimes you see particularly important business people (like a CEO) here walking with 4 or 5 phones on his belt (one of each carrier + 1 for strictly personal stuff)
vardump 13y ago
This is a country which Apple has never found easy - notably, Russia bans handset subsidies, making the iPhone an expensive option for most customers. The effect is exactly the opposite; those countries where phones are mainly subsidized have also the highest total cost of ownership and ARPU (average revenue per user). The subsidized phones aren't cheap, quite the opposite. Carrier subsidized model should be ended to bring down consumer telecommunication costs. It only benefits the carriers.
- snitko 13y ago
  That's very true. I'm in Russia and telecommunications are dirt cheap here. I barely spend $10 in 3 months on my cellphone (that's including occasional internet browsing, although unlimited traffic would cost you more). Broadband internet is also very cheap, my bill is $8/mo for a 30Mbps connection and unlimited traffic. I buy a new phone every 2 or 3 years. Go ahead and count on your own if I'm better off with this model.
  - sigsergv 13y ago
    That's true for a few major cities maybe, in province prices a not so cheap.
- aetherson 13y ago
  Well, I think in context, what they mean is: Russia bans handset subsidies, so customers compare actual handset costs from one handset to the other, and notice that iPhones cost hundreds of dollars more than other smartphones, making them expensive relative to alternative handsets. Rather than: iPhones in Russia are expensive relative to iPhones in America.
  - snitko 13y ago
    No man, you don't get it. MOST people in Russia really never buy expensive smartphones with subsidies. They actually pay the full price. My guess is, carriers tried this model, realized it doesn't really work very well and decided to dump it altogether.
eeky 13y ago
Russia leading the way once again.
dotcoma 13y ago
So, none of the operators were angry about possible (likely) NSA leaks?
- ak0s 13y ago
  Why would they bother? There is a local version of PRISM named <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM">SORM</a> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM">SORM</a> deployed at every provider.
andreiursan 13y ago
"draconian contracts" for me this means unlimeted Data Plans, some carriers only offer that for iPhone - at least this is valid for Romania (last time I checked).
abbot2 13y ago
Ex-russian here. This might be counter-intuitive to many people who never lived in Russia, but: mobile phone service contracts in Russia almost do not exist, entire market model for carriers is quite different. Carriers don't sell SIM-locked phones for over decade now in Russia. Most common contract features are implemented as pay-as-you-go with extra packs (quite similar to what giffgaff does in the UK). This is probably due to the fact that CRA and other similar financial institutions in Russia are currently in their earliest stages of development. Mobile phones are usually purchased absolutely independently from the mobile service contract, and almost never purchased from carriers: electronics stores usually offer better prices, and all Russian carriers are happy to sell SIM-only prepaid contracts (also see PAYG model notice above). So overall you should read this news as: "major russian mobile companies decided that long-term contract model required to sell 'cheap' iPhones in russia is still too risky and not feasible", no conspiracies.
- markdown 13y ago
  This is not Russia specific... it's like that in most countries of the world.

207 points by yread 13y ago

surge 13y ago

I wonder how much of it's related to fears that every iPhone is a secret NSA listening device? I mean if you knew the KGB could possibly listen in on your phones, how likely would US carriers keep it? I've been thinking an overseas consumer and business/government backlash against US technology products is inevitable now that the NSA being in bed with every major US technology company is public knowledge.

stephengillie 13y ago
What phone isn't? Is even cyanogenmod safe from the NSA?
- rthomas6 13y ago
  Well, if you don't use Google Apps with it, then yeah probably.
  - CedarMadness 13y ago
    You still have the radio firmware, which is closed source and can't be changed. That's where I'd expect snooping back doors to be located.
    - surge 13y ago
      Well most of the firmware is written by an Asian company, doesn't put it outside the realm of possibility.
- mtgx 13y ago
  I think so, since it's fully community made, and beyond the "official" CyanogenMod team, there are hundreds more developers making "unofficial" CM ROMs for other phones, and they get to see the code, too. Plus, the CyanogenMod team is now working on encrypted end-to-end messaging that is built-in: https://plus.google.com/+CyanogenMod/posts/23vfN2qdZTu https://plus.google.com/+CyanogenMod/posts/23vfN2qdZTu
  - superuser2 13y ago
    No, it's not, because everything useful that happens with your phone happens over a carrier network or the internet, both of which are available to the NSA. End-to-end encrypted messaging is a good sign, but it doesn't matter how "community made" your endpoints are - the NSA has the network.
    - mtgx 13y ago
      Yes, but if the communication is encrypted it doesn't really matter. So these text messages should be by and large safe. I agree about the voice calling, though, which is why I'd like them to use RedPhone as the default dial app, too, so at least you can have encrypted voice conversations when connected to the Internet.
  - abruzzi 13y ago
    Perhaps, but voice calls, and SMS all go through the carrier. While russian carriers don't have to provide data to the NSA, the probably do to the FSB. Yes you can make apps the communicate via encrypted channels, but that requires the same app at both ends, and ultimately I suspect apps are secondary for most people. Voice and SMS are the primary function of phones still.
mitchty 13y ago
If that were the case then why are Russians buying Microsoft phones too? Sorry doesn't pan out as an acceptable reasoning.
Kurtz79 13y ago
Seriously, unlike 99% of hackernews users, if the average smartphone user even knows what PRISM is, he/she probably doesn't give a damn. And carriers go where the money is. This sounds like a purely economics driven decision.
- surge 13y ago
  Well, if people over hear heard something like the KGB can spy on people who use Russian tech company products, people would avoid them even if it isn't necessarily true. Supposedly, the encryption iOS implements is supposed to be NSA proof. But public perception and consumer confidence in a product is everything. Reddit talks about it as much if not more so then Hacker News on the common front page reddits and I've seen quite a bit of griping about it from non-techie friends on FB. I think its very likely the contractual disagreement, but I'd be very interested to know if sales for US-based technology products have fallen since recent revelations came to light.
  - PeterisP 13y ago
    Come on - people overhearing that "KGB can spy on people using X" would not change anything, it is expected and well known that KGB/FSB can spy on you no matter what equipment you use; heck, if you're a political activist or interesting to the politically connected megacompanies, then you may have microphones in your house (no matter if your phone is "safe") and physical keyloggers in your keyboard cable (no matter if your software is "safe"). In that environment, you aren't surprised by backdoors, you treat them as a natural part of life. ALL things have backdoors, no matter who made them, so for individuals (not army/gov't purchases) that isn't a factor, you just choose whichever device you like. If they're not spying on you, then backdoors don't matter; and if they're spying on you, then they'll get the backdoor in anyways. If it didn't have backdoors at manufacturing time then it may have backdoors by the time it's sold to you. If the device didn't have backdoors when arriving at your house, well, it might have been installed yesterday. Americans could/should be surprised, but not Russians.

gcb0 13y ago

Any one care to tell us how good/bad is a market that outlaws phone subsidies? Is there better competition on service quality and cost or does it end up being just the same?

ak0s 13y ago
Unlimited mobile internet is $13(Beeline) — $20 (MTS) per month in Moscow region. Quality is far from good, can't compare to other countries though.
tikhonj 13y ago
My impression from visiting there a couple of times is that there is much more healthy competition among phone companies. It is very easy just to buy whatever SIM card you want--I could just walk into one of many phone stores and get one for my trip. There was also quite a bit more advertising for the bigger brands, which leads me to believe they have to work harder to acquire and keep customers. Dealing with phones and SIM cards there was much nicer than in the US, but that isn't saying very much! The US phone market is a complete mess. That said, I have no idea how much the law about phone subsidies helps this.
- xentronium 13y ago
  > There was also quite a bit more advertising for the bigger brands, which leads me to believe they have to work harder to acquire and keep customers Nah, don't be fooled. Most of the time, The Big Three (MTS, Beeline, Megafon) have almost identical pricing. They have been under regulatory scrutiny for price fixing more than once. Besides, there are several ridiculous features here (like inter-regional roaming, when you pay significantly more in different cities). However, it's really easy to buy a sim card, and that's what many people do, they have a Moscow SIM card and a Saint Petersburg SIM card. Quality of data connection is usually about average, could be better, could be worse. FWIW, I live in a small city (<300k pop).
mtgx 13y ago
Yes, much better when there are none or very little phone subsidies. They actually compete on services. Unfortunately, since the iPhone, carriers in many countries have started adopting a very similar subsidy program to the one in US, and the value/buck has done downhill since then. But the pre-paid market is still alive and well at least, and you can get a ton of minutes and data for small prices.

neonhomer 13y ago

FTA "which has helped enable the Microsoft OS to overtake iOS, gaining 8.3% of smartphone sales compared to 8.2% for Apple" So maybe windows phone will actually become a competitor to android in russia?

ak0s 13y ago
Not yet. The most popular shop Svyaznoy seems like promoting however.
mcintyre1994 13y ago
Unless they have a very loose definition of smartphone or I'm missing something, it doesn't sound like anything is competitive with Android in Russia?

ak0s 13y ago

Not a single Russian iPhone user I know bought it in carrier store. Mostly they've got it from Europe trips, others in non-official stores where prices 15-20% lower. So, despite official sales numbers are low, there is a remarkable iPhone user base here.

roc 13y ago

If the iPhone is considered "expensive" due "high import taxes" at $920, how is it selling on the black market for $3500?

textminer 13y ago
Traditional well-regulated customer-supporting carriers don't have the margins that black market dealers do?
- roc 13y ago
  But if you can buy it from the carriers more cheaply than the black market, who would pay more than triple that to the black market? They're not carrier-locked, when purchased direct from Apple for $920, are they? And if they're selling for $3500 on the black market, exactly how "expensive" can they be, at $920, let alone how could they be "expensive" due the import taxes that result in an official product that's less than one-third the price of the illegal product that skirts those taxes?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
mkevac 13y ago
$3500 is a price for a iPhone on a next day after it is released in US. After that price gradually decreases.
bayesianhorse 13y ago
Distributing iPhones at scale for $920 is a different beast than selling a couple of them for $3500. In the latter case, the costs per iPhone for the seller are much higher. The game for selling $920 iPhones is "find a price point were demand times price minus cost is maximized". The game in the black market is "find the highest price point at which the inventory sells out quickly enough".
- roc 13y ago
  But who would buy them for $3500? If the price of a black market iPhone is higher than that of the legal-market iPhone, with any regularity, it suggests that $920 isn't a problem, let alone the import tax portion of that: supply must be the problem. And if the price only hit $3500 in a couple rare situations (errors, morons), I'm not sure why they even brought it up as if it were common, as that fact completely undercuts the argument about the iPhone being too expensive.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

xentronium 13y ago

http://shop.beeline.ru/msk/iphones http://shop.beeline.ru/msk/iphones this is weird. Maybe they haven't updated their site though.

guard-of-terra 13y ago

People around me link this to official Apple Store opening. You can now order iPhone there over the internet, carriers can't realistically compete with this because they'll lose money selling for less that Apple Store and sell zero phones selling for more. (I've never owned nor bought anything from Apple)

fvrghl 13y ago
The carriers sell the phones for less and make money back through the service plan. That's the basic model for carriers offering phone subsidies.
- muyuu 13y ago
  Not sure about Russia, but in other countries there are tight regulations for phone subsidies (treating them for what they are: dumping of retail price with the purpose of locking in users - a blatantly anticompetitive practice that would be illegal in most industries). Strong competition has a similar effect. If the SIM free contracts are good enough, people are not going to get into lengthy, expensive contracts. This doesn't happen in places like the US because there's a very strong cartel/oligopoly there that affords them the right to simply deny you a terminal if it's not under the carrier's conditions. If Apple is selling for cheaper than the carriers can afford to sell, then they will simply do what they are doing: stop selling it.
  - jdminhbg 13y ago
    > dumping of retail price with the purpose of locking in users - a blatantly anticompetitive practice that would be illegal in most industries What? There are scores of industries that use loss-leaders to get customers to commit to long-term contracts. Razors, satellite/cable TV, etc. > This doesn't happen in places like the US because there's a very strong cartel/oligopoly there that affords them the right to simply deny you a terminal if it's not under the carrier's conditions. This isn't true at all, and I don't know why you would think it was. Here's a counterexample: https://ting.com/ https://ting.com/

gtrubetskoy 13y ago

"Apple dumps all three major Russian carriers" is how I would read this heading. Everyone I know in Russia has or wants an iPhone, Apple isn't losing any market share there, because you can get an iPhone from Apple directly.

gdy 13y ago
Yep, we have our share of Apple funboys here in Russia)

isalmon 13y ago

>> Russia has over 180m mobile subscribers The whole population is 143M (2011) including infants and very old people. How is it possible? Multiple phones per person?

mhurron 13y ago
Business and personal phones? Lots of 'Russian Business' around the web.
mynegation 13y ago
Several factors: people use separate phones for business (paid by employer usually) and personal calls, often people have phones from different operators, because of significant discount for calls within the same network, illegal immigrants that do not get counted in the census also own mobile phones (sometimes several phones, like I mentioned)
tucaz 13y ago
Brazil has around 190 million people[1] with about 249 million mobile phone lines enabled [2]. People that have more than one line usually buy one line from each provider so they can talk "for free" between the same providers. It is not uncommon for people to ask you what is your provider so they will mark it and call from a phone that uses that provider when trying to reach you. We also have a high number of people with phones that allow multiple providers with one device. Business and personal cellphones are not uncommon either. [1] http://www.ibge.gov.br/home/estatistica/populacao/censo2010/default.shtm http://www.ibge.gov.br/home/estatistica/populacao/censo2010/... [2] http://extra.globo.com/noticias/celular-e-tecnologia/quinto-pais-no-numero-de-celulares-brasil-pode-subir-ainda-mais-no-ranking-com-desoneracao-de-smartphones-8123620.html http://extra.globo.com/noticias/celular-e-tecnologia/quinto-...
- speeder 13y ago
  To make a example as brazillian: My close family is 4 people (my dad, mom, me, sister). We have 6 lines from one carrier (we got it in a special package, we use 1 line per person + 2 backup lines for whatever we need, since those lines can call very cheap each other, one use for backup line for example is borrow it to extended family) Also my dad has one workplace line with another carrier, and a Nextel Android. And I had for a while a extra line to communicate cheaply with people of the same carrier, thus in total we have 9 mobile phone lines for 4 people. Sometimes you see particularly important business people (like a CEO) here walking with 4 or 5 phones on his belt (one of each carrier + 1 for strictly personal stuff)

vardump 13y ago

This is a country which Apple has never found easy - notably, Russia bans handset subsidies, making the iPhone an expensive option for most customers. The effect is exactly the opposite; those countries where phones are mainly subsidized have also the highest total cost of ownership and ARPU (average revenue per user). The subsidized phones aren't cheap, quite the opposite. Carrier subsidized model should be ended to bring down consumer telecommunication costs. It only benefits the carriers.

snitko 13y ago
That's very true. I'm in Russia and telecommunications are dirt cheap here. I barely spend $10 in 3 months on my cellphone (that's including occasional internet browsing, although unlimited traffic would cost you more). Broadband internet is also very cheap, my bill is $8/mo for a 30Mbps connection and unlimited traffic. I buy a new phone every 2 or 3 years. Go ahead and count on your own if I'm better off with this model.
- sigsergv 13y ago
  That's true for a few major cities maybe, in province prices a not so cheap.
aetherson 13y ago
Well, I think in context, what they mean is: Russia bans handset subsidies, so customers compare actual handset costs from one handset to the other, and notice that iPhones cost hundreds of dollars more than other smartphones, making them expensive relative to alternative handsets. Rather than: iPhones in Russia are expensive relative to iPhones in America.
- snitko 13y ago
  No man, you don't get it. MOST people in Russia really never buy expensive smartphones with subsidies. They actually pay the full price. My guess is, carriers tried this model, realized it doesn't really work very well and decided to dump it altogether.

eeky 13y ago

Russia leading the way once again.

dotcoma 13y ago

So, none of the operators were angry about possible (likely) NSA leaks?

ak0s 13y ago
Why would they bother? There is a local version of PRISM named <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM">SORM</a> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM">SORM</a> deployed at every provider.

andreiursan 13y ago

"draconian contracts" for me this means unlimeted Data Plans, some carriers only offer that for iPhone - at least this is valid for Romania (last time I checked).

abbot2 13y ago

Ex-russian here. This might be counter-intuitive to many people who never lived in Russia, but: mobile phone service contracts in Russia almost do not exist, entire market model for carriers is quite different. Carriers don't sell SIM-locked phones for over decade now in Russia. Most common contract features are implemented as pay-as-you-go with extra packs (quite similar to what giffgaff does in the UK). This is probably due to the fact that CRA and other similar financial institutions in Russia are currently in their earliest stages of development. Mobile phones are usually purchased absolutely independently from the mobile service contract, and almost never purchased from carriers: electronics stores usually offer better prices, and all Russian carriers are happy to sell SIM-only prepaid contracts (also see PAYG model notice above). So overall you should read this news as: "major russian mobile companies decided that long-term contract model required to sell 'cheap' iPhones in russia is still too risky and not feasible", no conspiracies.

markdown 13y ago
This is not Russia specific... it's like that in most countries of the world.