Odnoklassniki

Odnoklassniki announces its Tajik version, the last among CIS localizations

By Oleg Kouzbit, East-West Digital News / Jun 20, 2013

Late last week, Odnoklassniki, Russia’s second-largest social network, announced the prospective launch of its Tajik version. The language of this small Central Asian country is expected to become the last to join the family of the former Soviet Union languages Odnoklassniki speaks.

In its brief message to users, the network said its mobile version was already available in Tajik; and Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted Maria Lapuk, a spokesperson for Odnoklassniki, as saying at a press conference in Tajikistan’s capital of Dushanbe that “the web-based version  will also be fully localized in a near future.”

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NFC

VimpelCom makes new move on Russia’s NFC ‘chessboard’

By Oleg Kouzbit, East-West Digital News / Jun 20, 2013

VimpelCom, a leading Russian mobile operator, has announced the next step in its endeavor to combine the mobile phone and the e-wallet. In an attempt to catch up with MTS and MegaFon, the other mobile players who comprise Russia’s “Big Three,” VimpelCom has pooled efforts with Alfa-Bank and MasterCard to  test a Near Field Communication (NFC) based payment service.

In this system, a user’s МasterСard data will be stored on his or her SIM card, and special banking software will enable contactless payment provided that cash registers are equipped with Mobile MasterCard PayPass readers. Transactions will be processed by Alfa-Bank, VimpelCom said.

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Russia games

Report: Gaming market in Russia reached $1.3 billion in 2012

By Andrii Degeler, East-West Digital News / Jun 19, 2013

Last year witnessed the continuation of the steady growth of the Russian gaming market, which reached $1.3 billion in turnover, up 16% from 2011, according to a report released last week by Mail.Ru Group, a leading Russian Internet group.

The growth of the gaming market is driven mostly by the online segment, the research points out. Its size increased 2.4 times in one year, and accounted for 64% of the entire gaming market in 2012.

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Yandex + Apple

Yandex search appears in newest versions of iOS and Mac OS X

By Andrii Degeler, East-West Digital News / Jun 19, 2013 / 1 Comment

Apple’s operating systems iOS 7 for mobile and Mac OS X Mavericks for laptops and desktops, which were introduced to developers last week, allow users from Russia, some other countries of the former Soviet Union, and Turkey, to choose Yandex as the default search engine.

The news was confirmed by the Russian company’s International Media Relations Representative Vladimir Isaev in an exchange with East-West Digital News. Both operating systems will be released to the public this fall; however, developers registered with Apple can already download them to have a first look.

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Russia microelectronics

Microelectronics in Russia: Market participants expect positive growth trends

A report by Frost & Sullivan / Jun 19, 2013

The microelectronics industry in Russia has been receiving quite a lot of attention recently with growing realization that intensive industry development is crucial to achieve import substitution and eventually compete in the international market.

At the conference that took place recently in Zelenograd as part of SEMICON Russia 2013, which is devoted to the development of microelectronics in Russia, Frost & Sullivan and Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI) presented the first results of the research entitled “The Russian Microelectronics Market” based on a survey of representatives from domestic and foreign companies operating in the Russian market.

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Ostrovok_2

Ostrovok.ru cuts a third of its staff “to make the company profitable and attract more investments”

By Andrii Degeler, Adrien Henni, East-West Digital News / Jun 18, 2013

Russian hotel booking service Ostrovok.ru, which has been generously funded by Western and Russian investors since its launch in 2010, has laid off about a third of its staff in order to optimize operations and secure more investments. The company’s co-founder Serge Faguet made the move public in a corporate blog post published yesterday in Russian.

“The reason is that we want to make the company profitable,” Faguet explained in the post. “In 2013, Ostrovok’s brand visibility reached 20%… As a next step, making the company profitable will help us attract significant additional investments to create the most recognizable online travel brand in Russia.”

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Mamba

Online dating service Mamba introduces one-click payments

By Adrien Henni, East-West Digital News / Jun 18, 2013

In what may seem like a commonplace feature in many countries but represents a pioneering move in Russia, leading dating service Mamba has introduced an Amazon-like one-click payment method, making the recurring use of its service easier.

Once a user’s bank card is registered for a first-time payment, subsequent payments are pre-authorized based on information stored by Visa or Mastercard.

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Vkontakte

Russia pushes anti-piracy legislation; VKontakte’s laxity once again in the limelight

By Oleg Kouzbit, East-West Digital News / Jun 18, 2013

As Russian media sources air reports about VKontakte (VK.com), Russia’s largest social network, getting rid of its illegal music content, VK.com itself denies any widespread purges, mollifying user protests with a ‘business as usual’ sort of message.

“VKontakte, facing the imminent adoption of Russia’s anti-piracy law, is busy removing its illegal music content – perhaps,” Russian news agency RIA Novosti reported last Friday, citing Robert Shlegel, a member of the anti-piracy legislative working group of the State Duma, the lower chamber of Russian Parliament.

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Yandex

Yandex offers €150,000 grant to Germany-based Wikidata to fine-tune its algorithm with “huge body of data”

By Andrii Degeler, East-West Digital News / Jun 17, 2013

Earlier this month, Russian search giant Yandex announced that it has provided a €150,000 grant to Wikidata, a non-profit organization that is developing a knowledge database with structured information obtained from Wikipedia articles.

Launched in October 2012 by Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikidata is creating a huge database about different objects, people, things, and phenomena, and how knowledge is connected and interrelated. The database can be edited by anyone and can be used by third-party websites.

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Russia microelectronics

Medvedev’s Cabinet compels state-owned corporations to buy Russian technology

By Oleg Kouzbit, East-West Digital News / Jun 17, 2013

The Russian Government has decided to compel large domestic corporations controlled by the state to buy Russian technologies.

Under a government decree signed earlier this month, a special “roadmap” is expected to ease business suppliers’ access to the procurement programs of state-owned infrastructure monopolies – including such large ones as Gazprom, Rosneft, Russian Railways, Rosatom, and Transneft.

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