In 2011, the Russian mobile operator and retailer MTS – one of the two exclusive importers of iPhones to Russia – brought in as many iPhones (for $140.8 million) as it had during all the years dating back to the product’s launch in Russia in 2008. According to the IT and telecom news portal CNews.ru, …
iPhone sales finally grow – operators accused of overpricing conspiracy Read More
Last week, the Russian business daily Vedomosti reported that the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) received a joint request from mobile operator Megafon and WiMAx operator Scartel, which operates under the Yota brand, to authorize a merger. Head of FAS Igor Artemyev stated that the merger could be authorized under the condition that Scartel makes its LTE …
Group-IB, a leading Russian cybercrime investigation company, has just published its 2011 report on the “State and trends of the ‘Russian’ digital crime market.” Russian-speaking hackers – both from Russia and abroad – generated more than one third of the global cybercrime value: they earned an estimated $4.5 billion out of a global “cybercrime market” …
Avito.ru, Russia’s leading classifieds site by brand awareness and number of users, announced today that it has received $75 million in new funding from Baring Vostok Private Equity Fund IV and Accel Partners as well as from existing investors Kinnevik and Northzone. The valuation has not been disclosed, but Avito’s press service told East-West Digital …
Avito.ru secures $75 million from Accel Partners and Baring Vostok Read More
M.Video, a leading consumer electronics retailer, will open a network of outlets in Russian cities of less than 150,000 inhabitants, Telecom Daily reported last week. The limited-surface outlets will extend their restricted on-site assortment through POS electronic terminals that provide local customers with access to the retailer’s full catalog. The first outlet of this type …
Click-and-mortar concepts gain traction among Russian retailers Read More
Scientists at the Ultra-High-Speed Optoelectronics and Information Processing Lab of the Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (FIAN) have joined with engineers from the Samsung Electronics Research Center in Moscow to successfully produce a 3D display that adapts itself to each individual user, FIAN reported last week. The new adaptive system presents multiangle …
Russian scientists and Samsung engineers offer “adaptative 3D display” Read More
2011 was a rather disappointing year for M&A both globally and in Russia. Compared to the 6% decline in the value of global M&A deals, Russia’s M&A market experienced an even stronger reduction in value, by almost 28%. This is a sign of its continuing higher volatility, but also the result of fewer mega deals …
Report: M&A in the Russian communications and media sector in 2011 and early 2012 Read More
Vimpelcom, a leading Russian mobile operator with a broad international presence, announced last week that it would sell its 49% stake in Vietnam’s GTel Mobile, a JV it had set up in mid-2009 with local Global Telecommunications Corporation. Under the terms of the $45 million deal, the Russian telco is relinquishing operational control of GTel …
The Federal Antimonopoly Service of the Russian Federation for the City of Moscow has initiated proceedings against the furniture company Shatura for distributing advertisements via SMS without users’ consent (SMS spam). During the check, the Antimonopoly Service established that Shatura had violated the article of the Federal Law on Advertising which forbids the distribution of …
Federal Antimonopoly Service initiates proceedings relating to SMS spam Read More
I recall discussing last month some innovation rankings and a number of top-ranked regions of Russia highlighted by RBC daily and its Russian official partners. Siberia was worth praising; it had shown such a terrific innovation spurt. Such national rankings are useful and interesting. But there are also other indicators for an innovation economy, and …
Why European business angels come to Russia’s regions Read More
The curse of the copycats has risen up once again, this time with a new twist – one of the most blatant clones of a German company from abroad. Berlin-based startup tricider (dot com) has been copied by a Russian firm called, wait for it, tricider (dot ru). The German tricider is a free web service …
Earlier this week, the Ukrainian-Russian-American startup Jelastic, which offers a cloud-based hosting platform for Java application developers, announced it has secured an investment of $2 million from Almaz Capital Partners and Foresight Ventures. This ‘Series A’ funding round brings the startup’s total financing to $2.5 million. In December 2010, Jelastic received seed funding from Runa …
Java application cloud-based hosting platform Jelastic completes $2 million round Read More
