Russian brand of budget smartphones Inoi leaves Russia

Inoi, Russian brand of smartphones, has left the country. Although there have been no official statements about this yet, the flags of Russia and Belarus have disappeared from the official website of the company. According to TASS news agency, they have been replaced by the flag of the CIS.

The official distributor of smartphones VVP Group also removed information about the representative office in Russia, instead, the website shows contacts of offices in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Earlier the Kommersant newspaper also reported on the departure of the brand from Russia, citing their own sources. A representative of the brand told the newspaper that the company does not give comments in Russia, because it is Estonian. The sources also told the newspaper that the departure from Russia took place about a month ago.

According to Denis Kuskov, CEO of TelecomDaily, formally the Russian brand of phones leaves the country for the first time. The reason for leaving, in his opinion, may be the desire "to distance themselves from the military operation in Ukraine in order to avoid problems with foreign partners and supplies."

The Inoi phone brand (Inoi Ltd.) is owned by the former co-owner of IT distributor VVP Group, Sergei Fomin, the newspaper specifies. Inoi smartphones continue to be sold in many Russian shops – both offline and online.

Phones from Inoi in the first nine months of 2022 in Russia ranked eighth in the handset segment with a market share of 5.9% in unit sales. In the first nine months of 2021, the same figure was 3.1%, according to data from Marvel Distribution, cited by the newspaper.

As for smartphones, Inoi's share in sales in Russia is less than 1%, therefore, according to experts, the brand's departure from Russia will not really affect the situation on the market.

Inoi devices are really quite inexpensive: prices for push-button phones of the brand start at $16, and prices for the simplest smartphones (for example, Inoi 1 Lite 4GB with a 4-inch screen with a resolution of 854x480, a MediaTek MT6580 processor and a 2-megapixel camera) start from 26 dollars. A more advanced INOI A62 Lite 2/64 GB (6.1-inch screen with a resolution of 1560x720, Unisoc SC7731E processor, Android 11 operating system) can be bought for about $100.