E-retailers want deadline of domestic soft preinstallation revised

MOSCOW, Nov 17 (PRIME) -- The Russian Online Retail Association (AKIT) has asked the president’s Chief of Staff Anton Vaino to meet urgently with the retailers and producers to discuss a delay of preinstallation of domestic software on smartphones, according to the union’s letter seen by PRIME late on Monday.

The economic policy committee of the State Duma, the parliament’s lower house, recommended earlier to approve in the second out of three mandatory readings of a bill delaying compulsory preinstallation of local software on smartphones and computers sold in the country to March 2021 from the earlier planned January 1, 2021.

But AKIT says the delay is not long enough. The association said that “in view of a sophisticated technological cycle of manufacturing, the necessity to receive licensed rights for software, the time for testing and design, the adjustment of manufacturing new devices with preinstalled Russian software will take at least from six to eight months from the moment of approval of the preinstallation order”.

AKIT also said that the preinstallation order was not set by the government as of Monday.

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