Chinese smartphone manufacturers Xiaomi, Tecno, Vivo, Realme, Infinix and Itel have begun to preload their devices with the Russian RuStore application market from VK, some models are already on sale. The newspaper writes about it “Kommersant”.
A Tecno representative told the publication that from January 1, 2023, permissions to access system settings are not granted by default for RuStore, which is included in the list of programs that must be preinstalled on smartphones sold in the Russian Federation. The first time you install any application from the Russian market, the Android system will ask you to give permission to download and install applications from this source.
KA Pen & Paper’s lawyer, Viktor Rykov, stated that Android-based smartphone manufacturers carry a legal risk within the framework of their license agreements with Google when pre-installing RuStore, and drew attention to this situation because the institution ignored the license rules. It may stop sharing some of the profits from transactions in the Play Store with manufacturers. At the same time, Tecno said that the scheme they used did not violate Google’s rules, as pre-installed apps were agreed upon.
According to the expert, companies that install RuStore on Android devices may face the threat of disconnection from Google services on devices around the world. He also believes that companies that officially supply smartphones to Russia can switch to parallel imports to avoid problems in this regard.
Previously, it was known that the Ministry of Digital Development of Russia. plans forcing smartphone manufacturers to implement the RuStore app deep into their systems.