Slippers not in size – Newspaper Kommersant No. 43 (7488) dated 03/15/2023

The legalization of parallel imports is often presented as an action that allowed the entire range of products of foreign companies that left Russia to remain on the market. However, this statement can be called true only with a very big stretch. There are many examples of the disappearance of certain goods from the shelves, and one of them is push-button phones of well-known brands, for example, Nokia.

Although the dialer market has traditionally been represented by a lot of brands, Nokia licensee HMD Global produced rather atypical devices, including those with support for modern 4G frequencies – and, therefore, with better coverage and voice quality than 2G models. Relatively expensive models running on KaiOS were five minutes away smartphones and shipped with WhatsApp, Google Maps, and their own app store. People often chose such “advanced buttons” for elderly relatives or even for themselves – so as not to be distracted by social networks, but also not to fence themselves off from the digital world.

Nokia push-button 4G phones, however, cost in the Russian market many times more than the basic models, up to 8 thousand rubles. for the most advanced. At the same time, more than 60% of sales of push-button phones, as they say in M.Video-Eldorado, fall on devices worth 500-1500 rubles. It makes little sense to import more expensive Nokia dialers as parallel imports, according to diHouse and F+ tech-Marvel distributors.

Meanwhile, demand, albeit specific, has not disappeared anywhere. As a result, a vacuum has formed, which is filled with counterfeit goods. On profile forums, stories of marketplace users are increasingly appearing, who, instead of genuine devices, received a device with signs of a fake. I confess that I am one of those people. Having ordered a seemingly not the most expensive Nokia 4G phone from Yandex.Market, I received its imitation – with crooked fonts, partial translation of the menu into Russian and, most importantly, without 4G and a lot of necessary functions.

The official presence of the company is expressed not only in matters of sales and logistics, but also in what image it builds, what experiments and expenses it is ready for. HMD Global perceived the Russian Federation as one of the few markets for which it adapted each “dialer”. Here, in particular, the company’s latest KaiOS phones, the Nokia 6300 4G and 8000 4G, were released – unlike India, which is traditionally considered one of the sources of the “next billion” phone users. No parallel import can adequately replace a manufacturer with an active policy in a particular market. Resellers primarily measure a business by profit per sale. As, by the way, and counterfeiters.