Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed legislation that bans the sale of smartphones, computers and Smart TVs without Russian apps pre-installed. The law will come into force on July 1st of next year, but before that, the government will create a list of Russian applications that must be pre-installed on various devices, according to Reuters.
Legislators claim that the law, which will come into effect on July 1 2020, will help Russian tech companies be more competitive with their western counterparts, and will offer consumers the “right to choose” domestically-produced alternatives.
The law comes as Russia is exerting increasing amounts of control over its digital infrastructure. At the beginning of November, the country’s so-called “sovereign internet” bill came into force, which gives the government the ability to restrict traffic on the Russian internet. Earlier this year, Google started removing websites from its searches at the request of the Russian government, and the authorities also attempted (with limited success) to ban Telegram in the country after the messaging service refused to hand over encryption keys.
However, the bill was criticized by electronic retailers, who said they were never consulted on it. Others fear that it could even force tech companies like Apple out of the country. “A mandate to add third-party applications to Apple’s ecosystem would be equivalent to jailbreaking,” an Apple source told Kommersant. “It would pose a security threat, and the company cannot tolerate that kind of risk.”
The Russian government is yet to produce a complete list of devices that will be affected by the legislation, or the Russian-made software that will need to come installed on them. Earlier this year, Reuters noted that Mail.ru was in discussions with Huawei about pre-installing its software on the company’s.
The Association of Trading Companies and Manufacturers of Electrical Household and Computer Equipment (RATEK) said that it simply might not be possible to install Russian-made software on some devices, and that their manufacturers might leave the market rather than go to the effort of complying with the new law.
