The oil price is plummeting, Russia is feeling the pinch and that is getting tighter with the US and European sanctions that have been levied against them. All this economic pain is causing a huge drop in the value of their currency, the Rouble; which fell over 19% yesterday alone.
It is inevitable that many things are going to give. One of the first things was from Apple Inc. who have decided that they are closing their online store where Russians could buy the latest, iPhones and iPads.
“Due to extreme fluctuations in the value of the Rouble, our online store in Russia is currently unavailable while we review pricing,” the company said in a statement.
In November Apple shut the .ru website only to open it 24 hours later with price increases of about 25%. So, for example, the price of an iPhone 6 with 16 gigabytes of storage increased to 39,990 RUB from the previous price of 31,990 RUB.
It is expected to re-open again later with a new pricing structure.
Apple products are not as popular in Russia as Samsung, so it will be interesting to see what, if anything, the S.Korea company does about the situation.
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