Deals Website Takes Preorders for iPhone 4S in Russia before Anyone Knows Availability Date and Prices

I have almost made a very spontaneous purchase today. I have stopped moments before buying an iPhone 4S that claims to be officially intended for the Russian market for an unbelievably low price of less than $700 for a 16GB model. But since I hate to make purchases on spur of a moment and will be able to make the same purchase of an unlocked device in the US officially from Apple, the voice of reason stopped me. But it has not stopped thousands of other people today.

One of the most popular (and trusted – I have used it without problems numerous times myself) deals website in Russia named BigBuzzy announced an extraordinary promotion (content in Russian): users are offered to buy coupons entitling them to receive an unlocked iPhone 4S on the 25^th of November for a price of $640 for the 16GB model. And since a price for an Apple product comparable to that in the US is something unheard of in Russia, it is no wonder that the deal is heavily discussed today.

The irony is that no one in Russia has already announced official date when the iPhone 4S will be available or the price it will sell for – but BigBuzzy somehow calculated their 51% discount from an amount (which actually looks rather realistic at about $1,300 for the basic model) that no one can confirm yet. They don’t disclose their official provider and the mobile carriers that are entitled to sell iPhones refuse to be in any manner connected to BigBuzzy.

In general there are plenty of dubious things in the deal that make people question its credibility in addition to lack of understanding of the source of a rather large lot of ‘officially imported’ phones. For example, one of such things is that the deal started tonight with only 200 phones (i.e. coupons), then proceeded to 300 and currently it shows more than 4000 devices already.

So at the very least it looks like they have first tested the demand and then started to increase the number of available phones seeing how enthusiastic people are buying. Therefore it makes me think that they probably don’t even have any contract with any of the official suppliers of iPhones in Russia – or at least no contract with a specific number of devices to be delivered. So of course one can’t help but begin guessing if they will be able to actually import the number of devices that they manage to presell by then.

Another question that’s difficult to ignore is how it happens that no one ever sold iPhones officially in Russia for a price so close to that in the US – normally the price for Apple products in Russia is at least double that in the US – and only this specific website has managed to offer this lucrative deal to Russian users. In fact, I think that if any of the big three carriers could negotiate with Apple the conditions that would have allowed them to offer reasonable prices, they would have done that already and people would have queued to them instead of trying to figure out if miracles do happen on BigBuzzy or still not.

Whatever it is, people discuss various scenarios here. First of all, the website could actually have a contract with one of the official suppliers (not numerous – only 3 largest mobile carriers are entitled by Apple to sell iPhones in Russia along with some of their direct retail partners) so they will actually be able to deliver the phones once they are imported to everyone who has bought the coupons. It will probably happen with some delays because it’s pretty difficult to imagine an office distributing 3,000 devices to all coupon owners on the 25^th of November. But it will still happen.

Some predict that there could also be a totally different scenario: BigBuzzy will be unable to offer the buyers the gadgets (at all or at the specified unbelievably low price) so they will have to admit just that and refund all the money. In this case a delay will be totally understandable but the funny part is that they will still be using a free credit for an amount of at least $2.5 million (with the current number of devices available) from their users for more than a month and given how expensive credits tend to be in Russia, this is also a nice benefit.

But the simplest and most obvious explanation seems to be like this: what BigBuzzy launches is simply a preorder for a gadget that is destined to be popular. And where no official Apple partner is entitled to engage in any such activities, BigBuzzy simply has a secret deal with one of them to be able to buy the exact number of phones they sell. And even if they don’t make a lot of money off it due to a moderate price, they will obviously get thousands of new users to the website that offers deals for everything – from movie tickets and potato directly from Russian farmers to Audi cars for half the price. And this buzz is obviously the most valuable asset for BigBuzzy, after all. Provided that Apple does not stop such a promotion for whatever reason Apple may choose and the buzz will be all negative.