Close ad

In Russia, a controversial law was approved today with the signature of President Putin, which significantly complicates the life of manufacturers of smartphones and other "smart" electronics. Reactions did not have to wait long and many manufacturers strongly objected to the new law.

The new legislation requires all smart electronics sold on the Russian market to contain government-approved Russian software. It concerns both phones and computers, tablets or smart TVs. The main argument is to increase the competitiveness of domestic developers with foreign ones, as well as the "practicality" of the fact that owners will not have to download new applications immediately after turning on a new device. However, these are rather substitute reasons, they will really be a little somewhere else, and it is clear to many what the issue is in this case.

The law, which comes into force on July 1 next year, is also not liked by electronics retailers, who say it was adopted in a hurry, without any consultation with sellers or manufacturers, and without a sufficient comment process from various interested parties. A big (and probably justified) fear is that pre-installed applications can be used to spy on users or what they do, what they watch and what information they consume.

As for Apple, the initial reactions to the bill were very negative, and the company made it known that it would prefer to leave the entire market if it had to sell devices with pre-installed 3rd party software. Today's reactions directly from the company were allegedly in the spirit of the fact that the new law after Apple (and others) practically requires the installation of an imaginary jailbreak in all devices sold on the Russian market. And the company allegedly cannot identify with this risk.

According to Russian media, the Russian government will prepare a list of applications that electronics manufacturers will have to automatically pre-install in their devices sold on the Russian market. It can be expected that after the publication of this list, something will only start to happen from the manufacturers. It will be interesting to see how Apple reacts to the whole case, because the original statement is basically in complete contradiction with how the company behaves in the Chinese market, where it gives way to the regime where necessary.

iPhone Russia

Source: iMore

.