Apple Temporarily Halts Online Sales in Russia Due to 'Extremely Sharp' Ruble Fluctuations

[RolyPolyBird]

This is total BS from apple. I remember when the pound hit an all time high against the dollar and apple were profiteering from it for a long time. swings the other way and they stop sales, if you do not live in the US the customer is the looser.

Really a silly move. Shows how much they are about the profit!!

Since its about childish games, Putin should kick them out.

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Id say its going better than iraq. These military actions around the world are like dumb and dumber......

There are lots of examples of Apple behaving immorally around finances but this isn't one of them. Further, no Fortune 500 company is going to risk damaging their reputation by playing childish silly buggers like you suggest.

Wow... this is a bit unnerving. Russia is spiraling out of control.

Hard to imagine that one of the world's largest corporations has to stop selling product in one of the world's largest economy, solely because the currency is so unstable.

I wonder if the recent OPEC decision to maintain oil output was intended to undermine Russia's oil industry and economy in order to bring Putin back in line.

Fracking and Chinese decline are greater factors. Even without the situation in UA, Russia would have been screwed given how much of their government spending is linked to the price of oil. That said when you include the UA context, Putin has completely destroyed any goodwill to help them out so he has dug Russia into an even deeper hole.

The only positive here is that Russians are well practiced at getting screwed over by their "leadership".

 

[PBG4 Dude]

Hey, Putin...

...how's that Ukraine invasion working out for you?

Heh, yeah, Crimea river.

 

[gyang333]

It's not "60% off" for Russians.

Say the price was X rubles, and Apple exchanged that into $600 and thought that was a fair price. And today X rubles are only $500 and Apple doesn't want to sell for that price. For the Russian customer it's still the same X rubles. The same percentage of their salary, the same whole in the pocket.

Correct but now they can flip it after buying, say on eBay in US currency and then convert back to rubles and now they suddenly have more rubles than before buying the iPhone.

 

[JosephAW]

Bljákha-múkha, это, скорее всего, в отместку за удаление Стив Джобс Мемориал Ipod.

 

[FloatingBones]

I was on a business trip in Seoul back in 1997 when their currency was devalued by 10% relative to the dollar on 4 consecutive days. This was decidedly unfun, because it had a huge impact on the value of pending transactions. The only good part was that it cut the dollar cost of my hotel bill substantially. As I recall, most everyone I saw in the country was a bit shell-shocked. I wasn't directly affected, but I certainly felt the profound unease.

IIRC, a bunch of businesses had loans in foreign currencies that were coming due at the same time. I believe their economy (and exchange rate) bounced back within a year.

This is completely different circumstances that Russia is experiencing. Fracking has pumped up global oil supply and has really hit the economy of Russia and Iran. In hindsight, this isn't surprising, but I don't recall anyone predicting this outcome a year ago...

 

[manu chao]

But in better news, hey, the Apple store gif is mesmerising. Can you name all 18 languages?

Image

My first attempt was:

English
Chinese (on consideration it might be Japanese rather)
Dutch
French
French (Canadian French?)
German
Turkish (I looked it up, this one is wrong)
Italian
Korean?
Japanese (or rather Chinese)
Swedish (mixed that one up with Danish, ie, it is Danish)
Portuguese
Portuguese (Brasilian?)
Spanish
Spanish (Latin America?)
Danish (see above this should be Swedish).

 

[IJ Reilly]

Prices haven't been adjusted in Japan recently for the ever weakening yen. The reason they are doing this quickly in Russia is because of the scale of fluctuations.

And thanks for your guess at what apple would do in the reverse. In fact, what large companies want is stability and what they don't want is risk. Unless Apple has started a side line of taking positions on foreign exchange movements, you can expect that they would be moving just as fast if the currency fluctuated rapidly in the other direction. They would have much of their foreign currency transactions hedged anyway.

The bottom line here is, multinational companies aren't so much interested in exchange rate adjustments as they are in selling their products at competitive prices within the many world markets. The huge problem in Russia isn't just the plummeting ruble as the rapid inflation. How do you price any product when the cost of everything in that market is skyrocketing? This is not a problem in Japan, where inflation is virtually nonexistent. (The big worry in Japan is just the opposite, deflation.)

 

[Glassed Silver]

Prices haven't been adjusted in Japan recently for the ever weakening yen. The reason they are doing this quickly in Russia is because of the scale of fluctuations.

And thanks for your guess at what apple would do in the reverse. In fact, what large companies want is stability and what they don't want is risk. Unless Apple has started a side line of taking positions on foreign exchange movements, you can expect that they would be moving just as fast if the currency fluctuated rapidly in the other direction. They would have much of their foreign currency transactions hedged anyway.

When the Euro got stronger, did they change the price matrix for apps?
Nope.

Glassed Silver:mac

 

[Mactendo]

Hey, Putin...

...how's that Ukraine invasion working out for you?

Sadly Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and Serbia invasions are not working out as well for US or it was already destroyed by today.

 

[Yvan256]

Bitcoin seems to be one of the few currencies underperforming the ruble this year. The ruble is down about 52% at the time of writing, and bitcoin is down about 55%. Go back another month or two though and the ruble would look like a paragon of stability against bitcoin.

Bitcoin is down 55%? Compared to what, when? Bitcoin hit a 1200$USD+ high at the beginning of 2014 and it's now trading around 300-320$USD, so it's down by a lot more than 55%.

However, Bitcoin was only worth around 80$USD at the end of 2013 and a lot lower at the beginning of that year, so it's still at least nearly 400 to 500% higher than it was two years ago even with the loss of value that occurred in 2014.

And if we go to the first trades of Bitcoin (valued at $0.008/BTC) with the Bitcoin value of 314.60 US Dollar
as of this writing, then Bitcoin is worth 39325 times more today.

 

[Analog Kid]

Bitcoin is down 55%? Compared to what, when? Bitcoin hit a 1200$USD+ high at the beginning of 2014 and it's now trading around 300-320$USD, so it's down by a lot more than 55%.

However, Bitcoin was only worth around 80$USD at the end of 2013 and a lot lower at the beginning of that year, so it's still at least nearly 400 to 500% higher than it was two years ago even with the loss of value that occurred in 2014.

And if we go to the first trades of Bitcoin (valued at $0.008/BTC) with the Bitcoin value of 314.60 US Dollar
as of this writing, then Bitcoin is worth 39325 times more today.

I was using prices from 1/1/14, so bitcoin was at $730-something. Now it's like $320 something. Your $1200 numbers are what I meant by "go back another month or two and the ruble would look like a paragon of stability".

I interpret stable to mean flat or, more generally, predictable.

 

[Yvan256]

I was using prices from 1/1/14, so bitcoin was at $730-something. Now it's like $320 something. Your $1200 numbers are what I meant by "go back another month or two and the ruble would look like a paragon of stability".

I interpret stable to mean flat or, more generally, predictable.

Yes I agree the value of Bitcoin is nothing but stable, however it has to be compared to shares in a system, not fiat currency controlled by a government.

 

[Analog Kid]

Yes I agree the value of Bitcoin is nothing but stable, however it has to be compared to shares in a system, not fiat currency controlled by a government.

I guess I don't exactly understand what difference you're seeing. Bitcoin is an asset held as a medium of exchange, just like dollars or rubles. Stability is an important quality of any currency.

 

[Fzang]

Russian iPhones appearing on Taobao with prices that trump HK and JP.

 

[kissds]

I live in the Crimea was a referendum ... ... but now, even Skype can not download because of sanctions))