Just call the phone – Newspaper Kommersant No. 204 (7405) dated 11/02/2022

In the third quarter, the average price of a smartphone in Russia, according to distributors and retailers, decreased by 15% to 19.3 thousand rubles. Smartphone sales as a whole fell year-on-year by 30% in absolute terms and 43% in monetary terms. Market participants say that Russians have begun to buy less premium devices, choosing simpler gadgets for communication. The fall in demand for the iPhone also had an effect due to the lack of a number of popular applications in the AppStore and the non-working Apple Pay.

“Kommersant” got acquainted with the data of “Marvel Distribution” on sales of smartphones in Russia for the third quarter. It follows from them that the average check for a smartphone decreased by 15% year-on-year, to 19.3 thousand rubles. A Kommersant source in one of the electronics retailers confirmed these data.

In general, sales of smartphones in the third quarter year-on-year fell by 30% in unit terms and by 43% in monetary terms, to 5.6 million smartphones in the amount of 107.8 billion rubles, the source said. The share of the South Korean Samsung decreased year on year from 30% to 9.9%, and the American Apple – from 15% to 6%. Xiaomi (together with the sub-brand Poco; 41.3%) became the market leader in sales in volume terms, Realme is in second place (16.4%), followed by Samsung, which took third place, is Tecno (9.1%), and closes the top five Apple. Tecno Kommersant clarified that the brand’s share in the Russian Federation reached 11% in units and 6% in money, which was the highest figure in its history in the country.

Citizens buy fewer expensive smartphones, they “become a means of communication, not a prestigious gadget,” Marvel Distribution noted. Kommersant’s source in one of the retailers confirmed that the demand was redistributed from the flagship models in favor of the middle segment. The decrease in the average bill is affected by the fall in demand for the iPhone, which have become less frequent due to the lack of many popular applications in the AppStore and the non-working Apple Pay, he adds.

The redistribution of demand in the third quarter in the middle price segment is also observed in MegaFon. “We see a high interest of buyers in smartphones costing from 20 thousand to 35 thousand rubles,” said David Borzilov, sales director of the company. Citilink, MTS, VimpelCom, Xiaomi, Realme did not answer “Kommersant”.

Deliveries of Apple and Samsung stopped in March, then they resumed, but in a much smaller volume, said the head of the analytical center GS Group Alexander Surkov. “Smartphones from these brands were in the premium segment. Thus, the share of expensive devices in the total volume decreased, which purely mathematically led to a decrease in the average price,” he said.

Many users of Apple smartphones were confused by the inconvenience of the new payment scheme for Apple services, the blocking of important applications and non-working Apple Pay, Fintech Lab analyst Sergey Vilyanov confirms. “iPhone users cannot be sure of the stable operation of the iOS platform in the future. In addition, the new iPhone model looks almost the same as last year, so many users have decided to continue using existing gadgets,” he says. In addition, Mr. Vilyanov adds, the leading vendors (Samsung, Apple) have not allocated funds to retail chains to promote their phones since the winter, which also affected the decline in the popularity of flagships.

Parallel import of Samsung smartphones is hampered by the fact that the manufacturer can remotely block phones activated in the wrong country for which they were supposed to, said Ilya Shatilin, an analyst at TelecomDaily. “Not all buyers want to take risks, so they choose other brands,” he says.

Earlier, retailers and electronics suppliers said that smartphones with unusual functions and limitations began to appear more and more actively in the Russian Federation (see Kommersant of October 25). So, among the iPhone there are devices from Japan without the ability to mute the sound of a photo, without a slot for a SIM card (for the USA) or with two slots (for China).

Anastasia Gavrilyuk