IPhone to Be Sold by Two Russian Companies

The new iPhone 3G will be sold by at least two mobile phone companies in Russia, and a third may be added soon.

Mobile service provider MegaFon on Tuesday became the second company to announce a deal with Apple to sell iPhones in Russia.

The company gave no further details about the agreement.

The VimpelCom Group, which markets mobile handset services under the brand name Beeline, was the first company to disclose a deal to sell iPhones in Russia, last Thursday, according to Andrey Eremichev, a manager at the company.

Neither company has disclosed how much they will offer the popular handsets for, nor any further details about their agreements with Apple.

A third company, Russia's largest mobile phone service provider, Mobile Telesystems (MTS), will also be added to the list of companies selling iPhones in Russia, according to analysts and industry players.

Igor Novikov, a marketing and communications officer at MTS, declined to comment.

MTS boasts around 91 million mobile phone subscribers, mainly in Russia but also including Armenia, Belarus, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

VimpelCom had 51.7 million subscribers as of the end of 2007, also mainly in Russia but including several other nations.