MegaFon, the Russian mobile phone company has announced that it will start selling Apple’s iPhone 3G in the country towards the end of the year.

MegaFon is the third largest mobile phone company of Russia and is keen to tap the huge market for 3G phones in the country which already has an estimated 500,000 earlier generation devices in use. On Tuesday, company officials announced that later this year Apple’s iPhone will be officially sold by MegaFon in Russia even though further details of the deal were not given out.

Officially the iPhone has not yet gone on sale in Russia, even though they can be found in the gray market where each device sells for about $1000 which is many times the present retail price of the mobile phone in US. Also Russians returning from abroad often get the phone for friends who then pay an additional $100 to get them activated in Russia.

The iPhone 3G from Apple is designed to offer web surfing features and video downloads at higher speeds as compared to its earlier versions. The phone made its debut in the United States in July this year and since then has caught the fancy of mobile phone users all over the globe.