Russian phone brand Inoi leaves Russia, company now positions itself as Estonian

Russian brand of smartphones and push-button phones of the Chinese assembly Inoi has left Russia, newspaper Kommersant reports, citing sources. 

According to the source, the departure happened about a month ago. A representative of the brand told Kommersant that the company “doesn’t give comments in Russia, seeing as it’s Estonian”. 

The pages for Russia and Belarus disappeared from the Inoi website, instead there is now a Commonwealth of Independent States flag, Kommersant notes. The Russian flag disappeared from the website at some point from March to September, the newspaper adds.

CEO of TelecomDaily Denis Kuskov told Kommesant in a comment that formally the Russian brand left the country for the first time. The reasoning for this step could be, according to him, “desire to distance themselves” from the war in Ukraine so they can “avoid problems with foreign partners and deliveries”. 

The Inoi brand belongs to former co-owner of IT-distributor VVP Group Sergey Fomin. Under the brand, the first smartphone using the Russian operating system Aurora was created. There were plans to sell these devices to Russia’s corporate segment, however, the sales were low, so the brand decided to start producing budget Android smartphones of the Chinese assembly.

In 2019, Inoi became a leader of budget phone supply to Russia. Currently, the company’s share on the push button sales market is 5.9%, while on the smartphone market — less than 1%.