Report: Russian Post to buy 171 mln rbl Inoi phones on local OS

MOSCOW, May 12 (PRIME) -- Russian Post has decided to buy for postmen 15,000 smartphones Inoi running on the domestic operating system Sailfish Mobile OS Rus for 171.1 million rubles with the tender’s starting price of 195 million rubles, business daily Vedomosti reported Friday on its Web site.

Sailfish Mobile OS Rus is developed by company Open Mobile Platform, affiliated with businessman Grigory Beryozkin. Open Mobile Platform participated in the tender with the smartphone Jolla C, working on the same system, but the national postal carrier chose company Distribution Center with the smartphone Inoi.

The operating system was first developed by Finnish firm Jolla, set up by Nokia’s former employees. It was revealed in 2015 that Jolla is owned by Beryozkin.

Open Mobile Platform does not manufacture smartphones, but designs the operating system and licenses it out to phone makers. The Jolla C, offered to Russian Post, is manufactured by Jolla in China.

The winner, Distribution Center, working under the VVP Group brand, is one of partners of the company Inoi, producer of the eponymous device. VVP Group used to be Nokia’s distributor and helped Jolla in 2014 to open an online store in Russia.

Open Mobile Platform’s General Director Pavel Eiges said the purchase of Russian Post has been the first deal with Sailfish OS in the corporate sector not only in Russia, but in the world.

Sailfish Mobile OS Rus has a full control over all options of a smartphone, has an embedded cryptographic protection of information with support of domestic encoding algorithms, he said.

(57.1161 rubles – U.S. $1)

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