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Forbes talked with market representatives about the mandatory preinstallation of Russian software. We selected the main points



On July 1, a law will be enacted in Russia, according to which manufacturers of smartphones and other equipment will be required to preinstall Russian applications on their devices. Forbes reporters spoke with representatives of IT companies, financial analysts and experts and tried to find answers to the main questions - what kind of applications they will be, who will benefit from it. We selected the main points from the article.

What kind of applications will be preinstalled


From July 1, 2020, manufacturers will be required to install browsers, search engines and map services. In July 2021, the list will include antiviruses, instant messengers and social networks, and they will also start installing them on laptops, desktop computers. In 2022, audio-visual services will be added.

Pre-installed applications must have at least 100,000 downloads and at least 100,000 unique users per month. And the final beneficiary of these services must be registered in the Russian Federation or be a citizen of Russia.

How many devices are we talking about


According to the estimates of M. Video-Eldorado and MTS, in 2019, 30 million smartphones, 2.4 million laptops and 3.6 million televisions were sold in Russia in 2019. Previously, retailers took batches from warehouses intended for any region - now the devices must be prepared specifically for Russia.

You should not wait for the gigantic sales and liquidations of old parties at the beginning of summer - most likely the state will allow retailers to sell old devices in the usual manner.

Who will benefit from this


According to experts, first of all, Yandex. After discussing the bill on limiting the share of foreign investors in Russian companies (which was also aimed primarily at Yandex) and a compromise solution, due to which Yandex changed its shareholder structure - the law on pre-installation, this is the first state initiative in recent nine years, which is beneficial to the company.

The law can bring Yandex up to 13.5 billion ₽ of pre-tax profit, because its share in the search will increase and advertising revenue will increase. Also, most transactions with manufacturers that Yandex has already concluded will become optional, because manufacturers will be required to preinstall applications by law.

Experts expect that the increase in the market share of Yandex on iOS will be the same as on Android in 2017-2019, when the company won a trial against Google on pre-installing applications. Then the share of Google on Android smartphones decreased by 10% per year.

To whom besides Yandex it is profitable


Some experts believe that the bill will also benefit Mail.ru. But company representatives themselves are still more skeptical. They believe that the conditions and criteria of the bill "provide unreasonable competitive advantages to one of the market players." Moreover, the condition that the final beneficiary must be registered in the Russian Federation or be a citizen of Russia, according to them, excludes Yandex and Mail.ru from possible software manufacturers. Some experts believe that the bill is unlikely to increase the share of the company's social networks (VK and Odnoklassniki) in Russia, since it is already more than high.

Other candidates for pre-installation are 2GIS and Navitel, which also have long had contracts with some manufacturers. Representatives of Doctor Web antivirus said the bill is unlikely to help their business, as they are already quite popular on Android. They see in the initiative only an additional channel for promoting products.

Little is known about participation in the mandatory pre-installation of MIR payment services, applications from Rostelecom, or applications with cryptographic information protection tools for accessing state funds, and company representatives do not comment on their plans.

What do smartphone makers think


In the fall of 2019, when the law was discussed, the association of trading companies and manufacturers of electrical and computer equipment (RATEK), which includes Apple, Samsung and others, was asked to reject the law and warned about the monopolization of the market. Business also said that the law contradicts the treaty on the Eurasian Economic Union and violates the principles of the World Trade Organization.

But the president signed the law, and in February 2020, many companies publicly agreed to implement it. Xiaomi representatives assured Forbes that the procedure for preinstalling applications from local developers was “thoroughly worked out” and the company was ready for the law to take effect. Huawei said that it’s "glad to cooperate with Russian software developers" and "seek to find the optimal solution for all market participants."

Apple will remain silent for now. Experts doubt that she will agree to preinstall third-party applications in her operating system, and recall that the Russian market brings companies no more than 1% of total revenue. Lawmakers, however, believe that Apple has everything to enforce the law, and cite Japan as an example, where the company preinstalls software for the national standard for NFC payments.

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