Gazprom, the biggest gas producer worldwide, wants to order a tablet PC with a minimum price of 119.7 million rubles ($3.7 million) for its chief executive officer, Alexey Miller. Gazprom Inform, a division of Gazprom, announced a tender for the design of a tablet based on Apple’s iOS operating system, which should perform the same functions as those provided by Miller’s personal computer.
The tablet must start within 5 seconds and have 3G, GPRS and Wi-Fi. The device will allow the CEO to monitor the affairs of Gazprom, from the production and export of gas to energy generation. The giant Russian company wants the tablet to support “management decision making on raising Gazprom’s efficiency regardless of his access to the desktop computer with the use of mobile devices.”
Applications for tender can be submitted until July 22, and the results will be announced by July 31. The winner will have until 30 April 2014 to provide the tablet.
Shares of Gazprom, Russia’s natural gas exporter, fell 13 percent this year, while the group is trying to combat the impact of lower demand for fuel and European customer calls to change a 40-year old system that gas prices are set by the price of crude. Investors are concerned about the increasing costs and reducing group’s dividend.
Alexander Patsay, a Moscow-based director of program management at the software developer Parallels Inc. commented: “Even though the $3.7 million price looks a bit exaggerated to me, it should be clear that we aren’t talking about an iPad decorated with diamonds. An automated work station for a CEO,” integrated with server software “could be indeed quite a complicated and costly solution.”
Vladimir Putin recommended in February at Gazprom’s 20th anniversary to “eliminate anything that is dragging the company down,” improve transparency and minimize expenses. Gazprom was created in 1989 after the Ministry of Gas Industry transformed itself into a corporation. Later, the company was partly privatized, but the Russian government still holds most of the control in the company.
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