News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on IPhone 4S has GLONASS in addition to GPS. Parent comment

Re:IPhone 4S has GLONASS in addition to GPS by mhw on Wednesday October 19, 2011 @07:27AM (#3129617)
From which:

    To improve development of the user segment, on August 11, 2010, Sergei Ivanov
    announced a plan to introduce a 25% import duty on all GPS-capable devices,
    including mobile phones, unless they are compatible with GLONASS.
I think I can see why the GPS chipsets are starting to adopt this...
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IPhone 4S has GLONASS in addition to GPS by 0x12 on Wednesday October 19, 2011 @09:00AM (#3129921)
That's a 25% import duty on devices imported into the Russian federal territory.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IPhone 4S has GLONASS in addition to GPS by mhw on Wednesday October 19, 2011 @09:38AM (#3130052)
Yeah, sorry - that's not totally obvious from the bit I snipped. Apple (and presumably the other phone manufacturers) do sell into Russia, and a 25% import duty would probably have a significant impact on their sales.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IPhone 4S has GLONASS in addition to GPS by listic on Wednesday October 19, 2011 @10:39AM (#3130331)
I was surprised when I saw GLONASS support appear in recent Garmin devices. http://garmin.blogs.com/my_weblog/2011/09/garmin-etrex-and-g... Now it starts to really make sense.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IPhone 4S has GLONASS in addition to GPS by MrVitaliy on Wednesday October 19, 2011 @12:06PM (#3130746)
That's hardly a motivation for Apple. They still don't have an official dealer in Russia and afaik don't have any plans. Yet, most of government officials widely use iPads (including the president) and every hip kid around the block has an iPhone. This suggests that Sergei Ivanov is merely looking for more ways to tax their own population, not Apple. Russian GLONASS is an archaic POS that they them selves have trouble working on their own, approved devices and a 25% import duty on GPS-capable devices won't fix it.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IPhone 4S has GLONASS in addition to GPS by alwillis on Thursday October 20, 2011 @02:31AM (#3133716)
According to http://www.macnewsworld.com/rsstory/64365.html, MegaFon and VimpleCom are legitimate carriers of the iPhone in Russia.

Tim Cook mentioned sales growth in Russia as something to keep an eye on in Apple's latest conference call: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/earningsq411

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IPhone 4S has GLONASS in addition to GPS by nobody314159 on Wednesday October 19, 2011 @01:38PM (#3131168)
The GPS chips include it (and Galileo) anyway since the frequency is close enough that you don't need any extra HW and with ASICs it's easier to just put everything it and fab a single device.

Whether the ASIC implementation works and whether the iPhone API actually uses it - is another matter

[ Parent | on HN ]