Russian Internet giant Mail.ru Group, which went public last year in London, could launch a VoIP service as soon as early 2012, the group’s CTO Vladimir Gabrielyan told news agency Interfax, Gazeta.ru reported last week. The product, created in a special lab set up in August to develop the technology, is already complete. “We’re working on removing the remaining bugs. The product must be better than Skype,” Gabrielyan said.
Mail.ru Group owns leading e-mail service Mail.ru and the two largest IM networks in Russia – Mail.Ru Agent and ICQ, the latter having been acquired from AOL in 2010. The group also operates two of the three largest Russian-language online social networking sites, Moi Mir and Odnoklassniki, and owns a 40% stake in the leading social network Vkontakte.ru. Mail.Ru Group is also Russia’s largest online game company and manages dozens of vertical websites in various fields.
The group plans to integrate all of its services into a single interconnected information space and expects to leverage its current user base to acquire a significant share of the Russian video calling market.
Skype is currently, by far, the leading VoIP player in Russia by the number of users – with approximately 8 million subscribers – but held only 32% of the market by value in 2010, compared to 52% for local VoIP provider Sipnet, which focuses on corporate clients, according to J’Son & Partners.
Another competitor on the Russian video calls market is QIP.com, which has offered its service for more than a year. QIP is a part of RBC, a powerful Russian print and online media group.
