"Yandex.Telephone" is not in demand
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Photo: Artyom Geodakyan / TASS
As the experts expected, the overpriced price of 18,000 rubles. did not allow the first Russian smartphone to become a truly massive one. Sale "Yandeks.Telefona" began December 6, 2018, but in less than a month retailers were able to realize only 450 units , write "Vedomosti" referring to the GfK data from retailers. The bonuses that Yandex offers to customers did not help either:
- six months of free food delivery, a subscription to Yandex.Taxi, Yandex.Music and films in Kinopoisk;
- 300 rub. on Yandex.Taxi;
- 500 rub. on Yandex.Money;
- 10% cashback on purchases through Yandex.Money for three months.
As the company wrote in the official blog , “Yandex.Telephone” is the first smartphone on the market with voice assistant “Alice”. Of the other "unique benefits" are called:
- Yandex Handbook on Russian organizations;
- number identifier with automatic recognition of fraudsters (machine learning system);
- “Yandex” keyboard, which is trained on real and actual user requests (also machine learning), in the screenshot it is compared to the Android keyboard, which does not even offer a hint for the word “Habrahabr”;
The 450 smartphones sold per month are ridiculous numbers compared to the sales of other brands. According to GfK, in December a little less than 3.5 million units were sold in Russia. Thus, from the start of sales, Yandex captured no more than 0.013% of the market.
Independent analysts say that December is not the best time to start selling a new smartphone at full price, because at this time competitors are making substantial Christmas discounts. According to the results of January, sales of Yandex.Telephone may grow, so that the total sales volume in Russia should reach 1000 units.