Anton Gorelkin, a member of the Russian State Duma Committee on Information Policy, made a request to the Federal Antimonopoly Service to conduct a check of the situation with hindered access of Russian application developers to the Apple operating environment in terms of abuse of monopoly position in the Russian market.

The deputy claims that Russian developers have contacted him several times with complaints that they cannot register a developer account in the Apple system, without which applications cannot appear on the App Store. To confirm the identity, Apple asks for the billing address from the bank through which the developer will pay for the account, but the data format provided by Russian banks does not meet the corporation’s requirements, and there is no connection to the system. As a result, Russian developers have to purchase accounts registered in the United States and China on the black market.

Original (in Russian)