Users will have to register the smartphones bought abroad

A group of members of the Federation Council prepared a bill to be submitted to the State Duma, which provides for a paid procedure for registering new gadgets, Kommersant writes. The innovation will affect not only importing companies, but also travelers who bring home a telephone purchased abroad. The authors of the project believe that the procedure will help to combat the theft of mobile devices and block the supply channels bypassing official distributors.

According to the document, both the procedure and the size of the registration fee will be determined by the government. Those smartphones that are used now, before the changes take effect, can be registered for free. If the device is purchased for state or municipal needs, it will remain unregistered.

It is noted that if the gadget has not been registered or has the wrong IMEI, then such a smartphone can be blocked by the operator. And from 2024, operators will be required to block all lost or stolen devices.

The Association of Trading Companies and Manufacturers of Electrical and Computer Equipment believes that it is impossible to introduce a fee for a measure that is aimed at maintaining law and order. It is paid from taxes, and the introduction of a new payment should be enshrined in the Tax Code.

We note that now in Russia, smartphones have begun to buy less often. Of course, this is due to the pandemic and the economic crisis against its background. In addition, self-isolation, which left citizens without the opportunity to visit the gadget store and choose a “live” smartphone, dramatically reduced the revenue of sellers of this product - only in the first week declared non-working, smartphone sales fell by 50%.

At the same time, perhaps the most desired gadget, the new iPhone, will have to wait for customers to wait - the crisis has slowed down the process, and Apple has announced that it will postpone the production of the next smartphone model for at least a month.