MOSCOW, February 26 Over the past year, India increased the supply of smartphones to Russia by 16 times in monetary terms, the peak occurred in November, follows from an analysis of data from the Indian Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
Thus, if the volume of supplies of smartphones from India to Russia in 2022 was estimated at $6.1 million, then in 2023 it amounted to $97.3 million, which is 16 times more. At the same time, the peak on a monthly basis occurred in November — $27.29 million, and the decline in March and July — the values there were zero.
EvApps project manager Rodion Trufanov told the agency that large smartphone manufacturers have production facilities all over the world, and India is one of such sites. «Xiaomi, Samsung, Google, Apple produce smartphones there both for the domestic market and for the whole world. In our opinion, this is just one of the supply flows from the above companies to our country. Smartphones are from Indian manufacturers (for example Micromax) have characteristics at the level of 2014, and cannot compete with modern models, so it is unlikely that they carry them,” the expert noted.
Leading analyst of Mobile Research Group Eldar Murtazin agrees with him. According to him, from India, indeed, it is mainly not their own brands that are imported to Russia, but, for example, Xiaomi or Apple.
«This is parallel import. And, in general, they bring what is in demand here. New Indian brands, they are in India, but they, as a rule, do not have localization, and the prices differ unfavorably from the Chinese. … Xiaomi is imported a lot from the Indian market, since there is a factory there, it makes prices for India lower than you can get in China. Due to this, they are in demand. And these, as a rule, are not even parallel imports, but “sulfur trucks” often. Although there is also parallel import, of course,” he summarized.