MegaFon, the third largest mobile carrier in Russia has announced that it will begin selling the device in Russia before the Christmas holiday but did not add any further details about the deal.
Despite never officially being released in the nation, unauthorized sales have been growing exponentially with industry experts saying sales of unlocked iPhones are at about 20,000 per month now in the country. With over 500,000 estimated iPhone users, Russia has the third largest population of iPhone owners in the world behind the US and China.
In a separate announcement, Vimplecom, Russia's second largest carrier, announced they to had reached an agreement with Apple to sell the phone. Many expect the region's largest carrier MTS to announce a similar deal in the next week.
Analysts believe however that sales may initially slow, as Russian buyers are normally put off by being locked to a certain network.
"Typically Russian operators are not strong handset sellers, and users prefer to buy handsets separately from their mobile contracts," said Konstantin Belov, a telecoms analyst at UralSib. "But the iPhone is very popular, and if mobile operators start subsidizing it, they will probably see strong demand."
Written by: Andre Yoskowitz @ 2 Sep 2008 11:27
