Since the beginning of the year, Russian vendors have outstripped American competitors in laptop sales in the Russian Federation, according to distributor statistics. But the indicators of Asian brands are still very far away.
Apple and others are behind
From January to mid-October 2024, 2.58 million laptops were sold in the Russian Federation for a total of 163.3 billion rubles, Marvel Distribution reported. The growth compared to the rest of last year has already amounted to 12% in money and 6% in units.
Chinese and Taiwanese brands (ASUS, Lenovo, MSI, and so on) are still leading the market. They provide 70-72% of sales. Previously, the second place was occupied by laptops from American companies: Apple, Dell, HP and others. But since 2022, their share has fallen from 30 to 10 percent.
Meanwhile, Russian brands only increased their share. In 2022, they sold 4% of all laptops sold in the Russian Federation, in 2023 – already 7%, and by the fall of 2024 – 11.6%.
Sanctions, advertising and public procurement
Market participants name several reasons for the transition of the initiative to domestic brands. Of course, the sales structure was significantly affected by the departure of Western firms from Russia: Apple, Dell and HP stopped official deliveries of laptops back in 2022. Meanwhile, domestic vendors have no problems with either the availability of gadgets or maintenance.
Domestic brands occupied 11.6% of the market, while American brands still had 10%. At the same time, for example, in 2022, brands from the United States occupied 30%, while Russian brands occupied only 4%.
According to experts, the growth in sales of domestic laptops is facilitated by the fact that they have no problems with service and warranty and the parts are always available. In addition, state-owned enterprises.
After the invasion of Ukraine, Russia faced myriads of difficulties. Most of them are related to the sanctions. However, the most important (for Russia) among them concern technologies, software, and hardware. Russia is not allowed to use any product or component that has been developed in the countries that applied the sanctions. You know that Google, Apple, Intel, and many other biggies have completely canceled all kinds of cooperation with Russia.
However, this is not only a punch but also an opportunity. In many aspects, the situation is similar to that of Huawei. And as you know, as a result, the latter developed its own operating system that might dethrone not only Android and iOS in the mobile OS market but also Windows in the PC market. The Russian company Promobit is preparing to produce a Bitblaze Titan BM15 notebook computer. This laptop will use an in-house-made “Baikal-M” processor.
It is worth mentioning that Marvel Distribution’s statistics hardly take into account gray deliveries. But it is through unofficial stores that most of the “apple” equipment is now sold. On the other hand, ASUS and Lenovo have also abandoned the Russian market, but this does not prevent them from entering the top sales in our region.
More than half of the demand for Russian laptops was provided by the corporate segment, said Olga Dorovskaya, vice president of the OCS distributor. This also includes government orders. So, in the first 10 months of 2023, the state spent 14.5 billion rubles on the purchase of domestic tablets and laptops.
Another factor is the growth in demand in the budget segment (25-30 thousand rubles), says Maxim Rodionov, head of the procurement department of the distributor 3Logic Group. American laptops have previously performed mainly in the middle and high price ranges.
And domestic vendors have just increased their activity in the consumer market, although they used to focus mainly on corporate clients. For example, representatives of Digma say that sales have increased, among other things, due to more active advertising.
What is Russian in Russian laptops?
The top domestic brands included OSiO, Digma, Irbis and Fplus. Sales are also growing rapidly at Aquarius and Kraftway. Many vendors assemble products in China from foreign components. But there are exceptions – for example, Aquarius has localized production in Shuya and Tver. And Kraftway has a plant in Obninsk with a capacity of 1 million devices per year. Although the component base, of course, is imported – for example, processors are represented almost exclusively by Intel and AMD.
