Smartphone sales have collapsed in Russia

For Russian smartphone sellers, the first quarter of 2025 was perhaps the worst in history — the sale of these gadgets fell by more than 20%, market participants interviewed by Izvestia said.

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Sales in units decreased by 26% and in money by 25% to 5.5 million devices worth 139 billion rubles, said a source close to one of the federal retail chains.

In principle, the drop in sales concerns all electronics, says Eldar Murtazin, a leading analyst at Mobile Research Group. Smartphone sales, according to the expert, have collapsed by almost 25%.

"This is a record market drop, there has never been such a thing in history — except for force majeure in 2022, when supplies of equipment to Russia actually stopped for about a month and a half," he says.

The key factors in the decline in sales were the very high figures of last year, cooling consumer demand against the background of attractive interest rates from banks on deposits and a reduction in the credit market, said one of Izvestia's interlocutors in the retail market.

According to experts, "Communication.ON", in the first quarter, smartphone sales as a whole fell by about 20% in units, and if we talk about expensive models, then by about 30%. This is a record drop, not counting 2022, the company agrees. A similar situation can be observed with portable electronics, laptops and tablets, they added.

The dynamics are related to the cooling effect of the economy caused by government measures to reduce consumer activity in order to combat inflation, said Alexey Pogudalov from <url>. Smartphones and computers are not essential goods and, as a rule, react immediately to such changes, he added.

"In particular, smartphone sales largely depend on consumers' willingness to upgrade their devices, even if the existing technology is still in good working order. Such purchases are often made when funds are available, rather than out of urgent need. In addition, a significant proportion of smartphones were purchased on credit. The current level of interest rates has a deterrent effect on lending in general, which primarily affects smartphone sales," the expert noted.

Read more in the exclusive Izvestia article:

Blown away: Smartphone sales have collapsed in Russia