Continuing its expansion into the realm of mobile, Russia’s search giant Yandex officially unveiled its application store for Android-powered devices at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month.
Yandex.Store already has more than 50,000 paid and free apps and is available in Russian, English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Ukrainian, and Turkish languages.
All applications in Yandex.Store are claimed to be malware-free and checked by Kaspersky Lab’s anti-virus solution. For paid apps, customers can use bank cards or debit money from their mobile accounts if their mobile operator offers such an option.
This way of paying for apps may prove more attractive for users from Russia and neighboring countries, where mobile payments have got more traction than payment by bank cards. A similar payment option is also available in Google Play, but only for customers of mobile operator Beeline in Russia, following an agreement in December 2012.
Yandex offers a share of app sales revenue to device manufacturers who integrate Yandex.Store in their gadgets. As of the end of February, at least six vendors were shipping devices with Yandex.Store pre-installed, including Oppo and PocketBook.
Yandex is also giving device manufacturers and mobile operators an opportunity to create customized Yandex.Store-based shops of their own. Mobile operator MegaFon was the first company to do so, launching its app store GetUpps! in February 2012.
An ambitious mobile strategy
By launching an app store of its own, Yandex is demonstrating its determination to become a significant player on the mobile apps and services market. The company already offers more than 30 mobile applications for major mobile platforms, International Media Relations Manager Vladimir Isaev told East-West Digital News, though its services still have “more traction on the web rather than on mobile in terms of unique users.”
Some applications have been launched on mobile first before being extended to the web. An example is Yandex.Taxi, which was launched on iOS and Android in October 2011 and came into the web more than half a year later.
Some of Yandex’s apps are developed exclusively for mobile. One example is Yandex.Navigator which is based on Yandex’s geolocation services as well as mapping and traffic monitoring technologies.
Earlier this year, the company released its Wonder iOS app which utilized Facebook’s API to put together all sorts of recommendations — from audio tracks to eating places in the vicinity. The application seemed promising, but was blocked by Facebook just hours after launch for being a “competing search engine.”
The Yandex search engine itself is offered by default on all Windows Phone smartphones shipped to the CIS countries and Turkey, as well as on Samsung’s smartphones running Bada OS shipped to Russia. Moreover, Yandex’s search widget is pre-installed on LG and Huawei Android smartphones for the Russian market, Isaev told EWDN.
Also noteworthy is the acquisition of SPB Software, a major developer of mobile software with offices in Russia, Taiwan, and Thailand, by Yandex in late 2011.
