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Digital in health and education
Samsung shuts Iranians out of paid app areas of Galaxy Store
Huawei moves in
cited Snapp! as one of its success stories.
Abbasi Arand added that a subsidiary business has been created to facilitate foreign investment in the company and attract foreign capital. He added that the new entity is set up to support further investment in startups in the country.
He pointed to "health and education sectors" as important for MTN-Irancell, saying that the firm’s new approach is moving towards advancing digital services that improve people’s lives.
"Irancell's new approach is towards 'digital operator' and the development of digital services that will improve people's quality of life," he added.
The company has in recent years increased its investment in mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs), signing deals with several companies, including SamanTel, Shatel Mobile and others.
However, despite significant investment in the industry the MVNO market has failed to take off in Iran.
An MVNO is a wireless communications services provider that does not own the mobile network infrastructure over which it provides services to customers but in fact pays a fee to the network operators.
Samsung has blocked access to parts of its Galaxy Store to Iranian users, Farhikhtegannewspaper has reported.
The Korean tech giant notified users in Iran in January that their use of the online store was set to become limited to “free apps”, with payment gateways shut down in a belated response to US sanctions targeting foreign companies still doing business with Iran. Samsung is reportedly the single biggest handset provider in Iran, with its market share in 2018 standing at around 55%. In August 2017, Apple removed Iranian applications from its App Store and the following March blocked locally-made apps Iranians were still accessing by closing a loophole. In September 2017, Google deleted Iranian apps from its Google Play Store.
The IT Organisation of Iran responded to the Samsung move by calling on the company to reverse its decision or face consequences such as the non-renewal of visas held by employees working in the Islamic Republic.
In February 2018, there was a diplomatic spat between Tehran and Seoul when Iranian and North Korean Winter Olympics athletes were initially blocked from a giveaway of limited-edition Samsung Galaxy Note 8 smartphones, reportedly due to Samsung executives' fears of breaking US sanctions.
In recent years, Chinese technology companies including Huawei—which given national security bans in the US would seem to have little left to lose by breaching Washington’s Iran sanctions—have moved in on the Iranian market, offering low-cost smartphones to customers who pay upfront for their devices.
Iran’s technology industry, meanwhile, has developed equivalent application stores including “Sib” (“Apple” in Persian) for iPhones and iPads while Android users can access several stores including Café Bazaar. In July last year, it was reported that a home-made Android operating system had been designed and developed by a group of IT experts at Iran’s Sharif University of Technology, often dubbed the “MIT of Iran”.
59 IRAN Country Report August 2020 www.intellinews.com
