Company official confirms the move, apologizes to customers

Dec 17, 2014 10:44 GMT  ·  By

If you happen to be running a business, now is not a good time to open a shop in Russia. Because of the ruble’s extreme fluctuations, Apple itself has closed down its online store in the country, and is now assessing the situation to see how and when it can reopen sales without losing too much money.

Apple halting its sales in Russia is an indirect message that the US doesn’t trust the country to be a good business partner. The ruble’s value surpassed a ratio of 80:1 (compared to the US dollar) this week. The country’s currency fell by as much as 19 percent today, “with a surprise interest-rate increase failing to stem a run on the currency,” reports Bloomberg.

Currency fluctuations

Such extreme ups and downs are not good for Apple’s business, as the company is required to constantly adjust its products’ individual prices based on a plurality of factors, chief among which is the country’s currency, followed by taxes and so on and so forth.

Today’s tumble has been so severe that the Cupertino giant had to completely stop sales. Otherwise it would have risked losing perhaps millions of dollars in sales. Alan Hely, a spokesman for Apple Inc., confirmed in an email today that the outage at store.apple.com/ru was indeed intentional.

“Our online store in Russia is currently unavailable while we review pricing,” said Hely. “We apologize to customers for any inconvenience.”

We’ll be back

In typical fashion, the Cupertino tech giant has hung up its regular sign confirming that the outage is indeed on their end, and that it is making adjustments to the store’s listings: “We’re busy updating the store for you and will be back soon,” reads the banner, which doesn’t say anything about pricing modifications.

In fact, the “We’ll be back” sign is more often than not associated with product upgrades and updates to the store in terms of deals and promotions. Sometimes such outages signal an impending redesign. However, this time around, Russia should certainly not expect anything other than price adjustments.

A regular practice

Despite what you might think, this is actually not that uncommon when it comes to big businesses, such as Apple’s. When you sell millions of products that cost in the hundreds and thousands of dollars, you have to pause for a second when you realize that you’re suddenly turning 20% less profit in a particular market.

The fact that Apple had to close down its online sales in Russia means the business matters enough to hurt the company’s bottom line substantially. Those quarterly estimates need to be reliable, otherwise investors will lose their interest.

Apple (3 Images)

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