iPhone 3GS Finally Arrives to Russia: 9 Months Later and $100 Less Expensive

Today here in Russia we have finally learned the date when we should expect iPhone 3GS to become officially available in the country as one of the leading local mobile carries and one of the largest electronics retailer have announced that they are initializing the sales this week, on the 5^th of March.

It is impossible to find any publisher that bothers to report this story (not really a hot one, after all) and somehow fails to mention that this latest model of the popular Apple gadget makes its appearance in Russia with a huge delay – 9 months after its debut in the US, Canada and some European countries. After all, 9 months is perfectly enough to give birth to a child so Apple has definitely taken their time with the gadget.

The huge delay is due to one much-discussed reason: the lengthy negotiations between Apple and the three leading Russian mobile carriers that sold the previous iPhone versions – and did not achieve any impressive results here. I’ve been talking at the time and I will keep insisting on it now that the main reason for the failure is the most obvious one: the price.

No matter how loyal Apple fans here are, I can hardly imagine the vast majority of my friends going and buying a cell phone for almost $1 thousand even if they could afford it – especially after almost everyone who wanted to have it has already purchased one abroad anyway. And without the culture of contracts that could enable carriers to subsidize the expensive gadgets, the price turned into something beyond understanding of most people who could ever consider buying an iPhone in Russia.

But unfortunately people in Apple who are responsible for international sales decided that the reason for the failure was not the price and insisted the gadget was not advertised heavily enough here when the official sales began. Believe me, I’ve been here and I’ve seen it: iPhone ads were basically everywhere on the streets and on TV so you could not really avoid seeing them at all. Yet the buzz did not change one simple fact: the gadget was not affordable at all so no ads could persuade most people to go and buy it.

Now the lengthy negotiations are finally over and iPhone 3GS is ready to make its appearance in Russia with at least one of the carriers (and others will obviously follow in the coming days as reports were that negotiations took place almost simultaneously with the other two largest players in the market) and it is absolutely ready for a very similar failure in the country for the same reason.

Yes, it is actually coming here less expensive than Apple insisted: the Cupertino guys demanded that the 16 GB model should be priced at approximately $1,100 in retail and the official announcement today is that this model will cost about $1,000 while the 32 GB version will be available for about $1,170. So basically the negotiations resulted in something of a success for the Russian partners as Apple agreed to cut the retail price by $100. But will it help?

To me it does not sound any more affordable yet sources claim that Apple hopes proper promotion can change everything: where last time the Russian partners carried out all the advertising campaigns, this time Apple is going to distribute promotion budgets on their own, purchasing the best prime time spots on TV and probably shooting all the outdoor advertising at the potential buyers that they could buy.

But irrespective of who gets control over advertising this time, I have a feeling that sales will hardly be a success again for the very same reason: the price is still too high, especially when you compare it to what you could pay for the gadget in the US. And it looks like even Russian partners don’t believe in their prospects locally as it is reported that the initially imported batch is only 30 – 50 thousand phones for the entire Russian market which is tiny for a huge country like this. I will be happy to admit I’m wrong if local retailers manage to sell dozens upon dozens of thousands of iPhones but for now I think that a delayed gadget with a pricing policy like the one Apple has does not really have any solid prospects in the country.

Via (in Russian)