Russian Mobile Content News
Weekly Newsletter

Mobilnye Otvety expanding geographically
According to Vadim Shilov, CEO of a mobile content provider Mobilnye Otvety based in old Russian town Voronezh, the company has 6% VAS market share in Russia. They entered Ukraine in July 2005 gained 5.95% market share in September. Mobilnye Otvety was one the first content providers in Belarus when in September 2003 they started working with a local CDMA450 operator BelSel (Diallog brand). Mobilnye Otvety is planning to expand to other geographical markets like India and China.
Source: http://www.mforum.ru/news/article/017451.htm

Beeline users received 66% more financial alerts in November
A stock market alert system Finam Alerts was launched in January 2005 by FINAM investment company. In November the system has sent over two thousand messages to Beeline (VimpelCom's brand) subscribers, showing 66% traffic growth rate. The users can receive alerts in SMS, ICQ message or e-mail letter format. Daily the system is distributing about 15,000 alerts and newsletters.
Source: http://www.cellnews.ru/news/soft/07-12-2005/2663.htm

Kyivstar launched CRBT service called D-Jingle
D-Jingle CRBT service provides Kyivstar's customers in Ukraine to set up music, odd sound or a personal greeting instead of a standard incoming ringtone. To activate D-Jingle one should just order a sound chosen, the service will start automatically. Kyivstar and UMC are the leading cellular operators in Ukraine, having about the same market share. In November 2005 Kyivstar's top management has given no permission to Roman Savvin, Kyivstar's head of m-commerce and content, to speak at the II Mobile VAS Conference in St. Petersburg.
Source: http://www.mforum.ru/news/article/017515.htm

HeroCraft's new "Dragon and Dracula 3D" mobile game
"Dragon and Dracula 3D" is a 3D version of one the most popular HeroCraft games about adventures of a funny Dragon has to fight against Dracula. The game was developed in a cooperation with a team of independent developers MobilCats. HeroCraft, Nikita, RME and Shamrock Games (Next Media Group) are leading Russian mobile game development companies.
Source: http://www.mforum.ru/sub/content/news/017517.htm

Popular Russian singer featuring in mobile content
GFI company announced a deal with Star Production to receive exclusive rights to develop PC games and mobile content featuring Dima Bilan, a quite popular among teenagers mainstream Russian singer.
Source: http://www.procontent.ru/?page=news&id=580

Content providing and print magazines history
A St. Petersburg based mobile content provider Ringtime published in December a pilot issue of a magazine called Simona. The publication is supposed to be a monthly periodical targeting youth people who are the core users of Ringtime's services. The magazine will have both print and electronic versions. The print version is distributed for free; a SMS subscription to the online version is for $2.5. Founded in 2003 Ringtime has been run by the former employees of INFON, the second largest Russian VAS provider after i-Free. All based in St. Petersburg, i-Free, INFON, Jippii Russia, SPIC and SPN Digital were the first independent companies started mobile VAS market in Russia in 2001. The first Moscow based mobile content provider was BeeOnLine, a project within the Internet incubator raised for VimpelCom and later acquired by the cellular operator. Print magazines for mobile content users have a history since the very mobile VAS market start. SPN Digital (acquired by Sumitomo Corporation in June 2005) has basically entered the mobile content market in 2001 by publishing a magazine about cellular market. Moscow's game developer and content provider Nikita has also published for several months a magazine focused on mobile phone users.
Source: http://www.spbit.ru

Huawei's Total Digital Music solution
Huawei announced in Russia a concept called Total Digital Music based on its CRBT platform. The solution is offered to mobile operators and content providers. According to the company, in 2004 Huawei's overall revenues reached $412 mln in the former USSR market.
Source: http://www.mforum.ru/sub/content/news/017547.htm

Newsland service for smart devices
A new free online service Newsland (www.news-on-mobile.com) helps PDA users to receive fresh information. A software installed on a mobile device scanning popular online resources for updates and automatically uploading the updates found. Newsland's catalog includes over 200 the most popular Russian Internet info sources: leading news servers, IT and mobile news, thematic sites, weather forecasts, entertainment sites.
Source: http://www.cellnews.ru/news/soft/09-12-2005/2681.htm

Life:) offers news for free in Ukraine
In December Ukraine's cellular operator Life:) offers news monthly subscription just for $0.0025 (UAH 0.01). The news service is packed in "lifebox" infotainment product of the operator. life:) is a brand of Astelit company offering mobile phone services in Ukraine since January 2005.
Source: http://www.mforum.ru/sub/content/news/017564.htm

SMARTS users can pay for ground line phone by SMS
From December 01 the customers of Astrakhan GSM, a subsidiary of SMARTS, can transfer money from their mobile operator account to their account at Svyazinform, a local subsidiary of Svyazinvest, the largest Russian telecom provider. The minimal amount to transfer over SMS is $2, the service charge is 5%. SMARTS, leading Russian regional still independent cellular operator in the Central Russia, is a possible acquisition target for Tele2, a Scandinavian operator struggling in Russia with the "Big Three" (Megafon, MTS, VimpelCom). Many Russian content providers encountered access problems trying to introduce their services to SMARTS' customers.
Source: http://www.cellnews.ru/news/soft/09-12-2005/2680.htm

Popular mobile phones for WAP site access
A WAP statistics service TOP.WAPSTART provides not only traffic data for registered WAP sites but also accumulates data on phone models accessed to those site. Daily TOP.WAPSTART monitoring over a million hits and, according to the services developers, the data is statistically representative and could be approximated to the entire Russian WAP segment. In November 2005 the five most popular mobile phone models in Russia for WAP use: SonyEricsson K700i & K500i, Nokia 6230, Samsung SGH-X100 and Nokia 3230. WAPSTART is a project of Oemdesign company specialized in development projects for mobile communications and the Internet.
Source: http://www.mforum.ru/news/article/017585.htm

SkyLink gets money over CyberPlat online payment system
Now customers of SkyLink in St. Petersburg can feed up their mobile accounts over CyberPlat online payment system. In April 2005 such a service became available to SkyLink users in Moscow. SkyLink is the largest CDMA450 mobile operator in Russia. CyberPlat is one of the very first Russian Internet payment systems. The project was started by Moscow's Platina Bank in 1997 and had an impact on e-commerce development in Russia.
Source: http://www.cnews.ru

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