Apple finally did not resist and officially announced restrictions on Russia. Not only are Apple Pay restricted, but all product sales are suspended. Under the increasing restrictions of technology giants and the impact of cyber attacks, Russia plans to cut off the global Internet and enable domestic local area networks.
Today, let's use real cases to talk about how serious the impact of technological restrictions is in modern society.
Let's start with this chart, as Apple and Google stop supplying Apple Pay and Google Pay services. The Moscow metro payment system became unusable, resulting in long queues of people settling in cash. This is like our two major online payment platforms in China are restricted, and the impact is very serious.
As tech giants have imposed restrictions, they have had a huge impact on ordinary Russians, no less than wars in the traditional sense. We may not have thought that a small mobile payment software can also card neck. At the same time, it also allows us to see that the public service field really cannot allow these uncontrollable enterprises to intervene. In addition, let's take a look at what other technological restrictions Russia has suffered.
Apple officially announced on March 1 that it has suspended the sale of all Apple products in Russia. Not only Apple, but also Intel, Dell, AMD, and TSMC have also announced that they will stop supplying products to Russia.
This matter is very confusing, market research agency IDC data show that in the first quarter of 2021, the Russian mobile phone market share, Samsung 35.6% ranked first, Xiaomi 28.2% ranked second, Apple mobile phone market share accounted for 15.8%, ranking third. With such a large shipment, does Apple, as a commercial company, have to give up such a large market?
Many fruit fans on the Internet explained that this move was due to the depreciation of the ruble, and at the end of last year, Apple also made price adjustments and suspended sales in other countries due to currency fluctuations, and judged that Apple did this because of commercial considerations.
But so far, we have not seen Xiaomi, which has a higher market share in Russia, implement the same strategy. Not even Samsung.
In addition to Apple, there is also a certain possibility that Google will further restrict GMS. Because in 2019, for some reasons, Google no longer authorized Huawei to continue to use Google GMS services, and there has been no sign of liberalization until now. If Google really does this, it will be equivalent to us not being able to use WeChat and Alipay, which will have a serious impact on the lives of the Russian people.
More importantly, the Russian network has been frequently hacked, resulting in the inability of the domestic network to function properly. But fortunately, Russia has long been prepared. On March 1, the Russian "Izvestia" said that affected by this, Russia plans to enable its own Internet, called Runnet, which is actually a large local area network. In the coming days, Russia could be disconnected from the global internet.
The local area network Runet is an internal local area network built by Russia for the purpose of national network defense, which is separated from the global Internet. In May 2019, in order to get rid of the dependence on overseas networks, the domestic Internet that can be operated independently was gradually established.
I don't know if these tech giants will return to the Russian market when the dust settles, but I believe that Great Russia will not welcome them again. Rather, it is more determined to achieve technological self-reliance and seek more trustworthy partners. Indeed, some Russian manufacturers have proposed that they can try to buy chips from China in response to the "cut off" of chips by technology companies. Although China is not yet able to provide the most advanced products, the basic products should be no problem.
Talk to you about this today, remember to pay attention to me, I am Lao Meng, we will see you in the next issue.