There’s good money to be made selling iPhones in Russia. It’s “a product with enough cachet among Russia’s nouveau riches that at one point last September a black market iPhone 5 could fetch $3,700 in Moscow or St. Petersburg,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“But 10 months later, there’s not an iPhone to be had at any of the big three carriers’ stores. Last week the last hold-out — VimpleCom, which sells phones under the Beeline brand — cut its ties with Apple and began offering its customers Samsung’s Galaxy S4 instead,” P.E.D. reports. “What happened? What makes Russia different from the rest of the world?”
P.E.D. reports, “Russia’s unique market dynamics have taken their toll. Microsoft’s share of the Russian smartphone market, for example, grew to 8.2% last quarter compared with 5.1% a year earlier, according to IDC. During the same period, Apple’s share dropped to 8.3% from 9%.”
Read more in the full article here.