{"id":613864,"date":"2023-03-03T08:49:10","date_gmt":"2023-03-03T14:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/03\/the-sketchy-plan-to-build-a-russian-android-phone\/"},"modified":"2023-03-03T08:49:10","modified_gmt":"2023-03-03T14:49:10","slug":"the-sketchy-plan-to-build-a-russian-android-phone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/03\/the-sketchy-plan-to-build-a-russian-android-phone\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sketchy Plan to Build a Russian Android Phone"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The fresh wave of sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine has given new wind to the concept of technological self-sufficiency, with Russia\u2019s government launching multiple initiatives to create domestic substitutes for foreign electronics, online platforms, and software, on which many Russian companies are dependent.<\/p>\n

Over a thousand tech companies stopped or curtailed their operations in Russia after the invasion of Ukraine. In just a month, Cisco, SAP, Oracle, IBM, TSMC, Nokia, and Ericsson, as well as Samsung and Apple, left the market, affecting entire industries, including mobile operators, factories, startups, and large state-owned companies. According to IDC, a global market-analysis firm, the Russian IT market in 2022 shrank by $12.1 billion, or 39 percent.<\/p>\n

Russian prime minister Mikhail Mishustin\u00a0said<\/a> in February that Russia wants to replace 85 percent of foreign software with Russian substitutes, opening\u00a0dozens<\/a> of so-called import substitution centers. Among them is a project to create a national operating system for devices. The plan, however, is at an early stage with no road map in sight, says the Internet Research Institute\u2019s Kazaryan.<\/p>\n

\u201cCurrently, a few big players are trying to woo the government for subsidies to create devices on \u2018national mobile OS,\u2019 whatever that might be,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

One of the more promising alternatives to Android is Aurora OS, a Linux-based smartphone operating system made by the Russian state-owned telecommunications firm Rostelecom. But Aurora was primarily made for government use and does not support Android apps. In December, the Russian government\u00a0refused<\/a> to allocate any of the 22 billion rubles ($292.1 million) earmarked for the development of the Russian operating system.<\/p>\n

Other Russian smartphone makers, such as BQ, have promised to adapt Huawei\u2019s HarmonyOS for its handsets. But there’s been no news of progress since BQ\u2019s announcement in September. Huawei, which is based in China, developed its own operating system in 2019 after Google stopped providing its suite of mobile software services to the company because of US trade sanctions. The Chinese IT giant has said it has no plans to launch HarmonyOS-equipped mobile phones outside of China.<\/p>\n

Huawei\u2019s struggle to compete outside China shows that it\u2019s hard for a smartphone brand to gain buyers without access to Google services. Huawei lost almost a\u00a0third of its revenue<\/a> in 2020, the year after sanctions cut its access to Google Maps, Gmail, and other common Google apps. The biggest hurdle NCC\u2019s new smartphone may face, however, is cheap and readily available phones from China.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Counterpoint\u2019s data shows that phones from Xiaomi, Realme, and Honor, a budget brand previously owned by Huawei, have replaced once best-selling iPhones and Samsung Galaxy devices, accounting for 95 percent of the market last year.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s still a lot of competition,\u201d says Counterpoint\u2019s Stryjak. \u201cI don’t think there’s a huge gap in the market for a new player.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other Russian phones, most famously Yotaphone, have tried to capture the domestic market, but they remained at a very small scale, says Stryjak. Russians prefer brands they already know. Thanks to parallel trading\u2014importing goods without the permission of the manufacturer\u2014even Samsungs and iPhones are still available in the country. NCC says it aims to price its smartphones between 10,000 and 30,000 rubles ($132 and $398).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are considering various options. This could be production at Russian factories or contract manufacturing at Chinese enterprises,\u201d NCC\u2019s Kalinin told local media. NCC did not respond to WIRED\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n

Other Russian smartphone makers such as Smartekosistema, owned by state giant Rostec, have found that they were\u00a0unable<\/a> to procure the necessary chips from TSMC for the second iteration of their handset, the AYYA T2. All of this may make creating Russian challengers to Samsung or Apple very expensive.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou probably can make a smartphone in Russia with Chinese parts, but it’s not very efficient,\u201d says Kazaryan. \u201cAnd why would anyone buy a Russian phone that is more expensive than Xiaomi?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Masha Borak<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The fresh wave of sanctions after the invasion of Ukraine has given new wind to the concept of technological self-sufficiency, with Russia\u2019s government launching multiple initiatives to create domestic substitutes for foreign electronics, online platforms, and software, on which many Russian companies are dependent.Over a thousand tech companies stopped or curtailed their operations in Russia<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":613865,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4503,33310,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-613864","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-build","8":"category-sketchy","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=613864"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613864\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613865"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}