Apple closes russian online store as the Ruble plummets

Being an Apple fan in Russia has never been quite as easy as other parts of the world and now it's just gotten a little harder. As of today, Apple has closed it's Russian online store and is no longer selling hardware to anyone using the Ruble as their currency, following its value crash in the past few days.

Apple spokesperson Alan Hely, had the following to say to Bloomberg: “Our online store in Russia is currently unavailable while we review pricing. We apologize to customers for any inconvenience,” he said.

As cool as snoboarding money is, this is now far less valuable

Apple has no brick-and-mortar retail outlets of it's own in Russia, so it's online store, which only opened in June last year, is the only place for Russian consumers to buy directly. It is still possible to find Apple smartphones and tablets for sale though Russians carriers, but with the deepening crisis in the Russian economy that might not last.

At the end of the day this makes financial sense for Apple, as all of the profits it makes in Russia would be exchanged from Rubles into Dollars or Euros for a substantial loss. Just recently it has also had to increase the price of the iPhone 6 by 25 percent in the country due to rapidly worsening exchange rates.

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KitGuru Says: Seeing as the online store only opened in June of last year there are probably still several different options for Russian Apple fans to buy hardware, even if not directly. But this might be the least of their worries at the moment with the state of the Economy.

Source: Bloomberg

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