Vladimir Putin, the President of the Russian Federation, signed the amendments to the law “On Protection of Consumer Rights”. From July 1, 2020, Russian programs must be preinstalled on smartphones, computers and other equipment.

What kind of programs it will be, on what devices they will have to be preinstalled – it is not known, this will be determined by the government a little later. The State Duma also introduced a bill on liability for the sale of devices without pre-installed Russian software: from 30 to 000 rubles for officials and from 50 to 000 rubles for legal entities.

Last week, several companies that are members of the Association of Trade Companies and Manufacturers of Electrical and Computer Equipment (including Apple, Samsung, Google and Intel) wrote an open letter to Vladimir Putin, asking him not to accept the amendments:

We are waiting for a list of devices and programs, as well as comments from large companies on this matter. Apple has never changed the standard set of applications for its devices and, most likely, will not do it for the sake of the Russian market. Therefore, next year we may be left without an iPhone 12 on the first day of sales (of course, we are talking about official devices).