Mobile Content Russia

Mobile ad network WapStart has announced its Q3 financial results revealing turnover sequential growth by 86%. The rise was caused by increase in advertisers' number, as well as ad network capacity growth.

During the third quarter 2009 number of advertisers in WapStart increased 88% in comparison with the second quarter. The number of ad campaigns grew even more – by 136%. Altogether these figures provided network revenue growth by 86%.

MVNO «PROSTO dlya obscheniya» («Simply for communication») has announced that it has signed up more than 350,000 subscribers. Promotion campaign and pricing down of data plans have significantly improved the sales figures, - the company hopes to sign up half a million subscribers by the end of this year. In august the number of MVNO subscribers reached 260,000 users.

VimpelCom (which operates under the Beeline trademark) published the rating of content-providers for September 2009. Top-20 is based on total fee paid to companies by VimpelCom for providing services via partner programs (voice, SMS, WAP). Top 5 companies in the rating are A1, Zed Russia (INFON), i-Free, IncoreMedia, and SMS Online.

1. A1
2. Zed Russian (former INFON)
3. i-Free
4. IncoreMedia
5. SMS Online
6. Neva Line
7. Plastic Media
8. Next Media Channels (part of Next Media Group)
9. Iricom
10. Inform-Mobil/IMMO

Telenor and Russia's Altimo have found a route out of their persistent battles over their Russian and Ukrainian assets and have announced plans to common assets in VimpelCom (which operates under the Beeline trademark) and Kyivstar to create a single company.

Altimo is the telecoms investment arm of Russia's Alfa Group, controlled by Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman. Telenor holds 56.5 per cent of the shares in Kyivstar. The remaining 43.5 per cent is held by Alfa affiliate Storm. Altimo also owns 6.6% of Turkcell, though which it has a secondary investment in Ukrainian mobile operator Astelit.

Spb Software officially announced the release of SPB Mobile Shell 3.5 for Windows Mobile today at a press event in Taipei, Taiwan.

SPB Mobile Shell has been publicly recognized as the best-selling mobile application across all smartphone platforms for three consecutive years: 2007, 2008 and 2009. By encapsulating support for gravity sensors and 3D hardware accelerators, the new version offers a thrilling, easy and fun to use interaction model with eye-catching 3D visual effects. For example, browsing email and text messages unfolds an intuitive animation offering both natural and engaging user experience.

i-Free, a leading provider of content services in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, is pleased to note that the market for downloadable mobile content is showing signs of recovery. In July, mobile content sales showed impressive growth for the first time since the crisis struck, and remained high in August, while the mobile content index appeared to be steadily on the grow.

In July, i-Free analysts noted a more than 30% growth in the sales of mobile content downloaded by users from catalogues published by i-Free in the print media. Sales remained equally high through August.

Russia's smallest of the big three dominant operators, MegaFon has reported a 10.8% drop in second quarter profits, which it put down mainly to currency changes. The company reported a quarterly profit of RUB 9 billion (US$284.8 million), while revenues rose by 3.4 percent to RUB 43.9 billion (US$1.4 billion).

Sergey Soldatenkov, Chief Executive Officer of MegaFon, said: "We had a very good overall performance in the six months ended June 30, 2009, showing growth in financial indicators versus the corresponding period in the previous "pre-crisis" year. The first quarter of 2009 was not easy, our subscribers reduced their monthly usage and spending, and new subscriber additions slowed, but we were able to offset this by pursuing a conservative approach to costs and by efficient business management. As a result, by the end of the current period we managed to reverse the negative trends which were evident at the beginning of this year and were able, through effective marketing initiatives in the second quarter of 2009, to realize improved MOU and ARPU".

Spb Software announces the release of SPB TV for Android phones. SPB TV is a subscription-free mobile IPTV viewer, designed for tuning in to publicly available digital TV channels from all over the world. SPB TV features exclusive and patent-pending usability innovations like picture-in-picture mode and gives the mobile subscribers easy access to over a hundred of international TV channels, directly from their phones.

Proven track record of high quality customization projects made SPB Software a stratigic partner for many carriers, who manage a wide range of mobile devices. With this release SPB TV becomes available for Windows Mobile, Symbian and Android platforms providing diverse mobile carrier customers with the next generation mobile TV experience.

J'son & Partners Consulting presents the key results of Mobile Ad and Marketing research held in August 2009. In the framework of the research the current status and dynamics of Russian and foreign markets have been analyzed. Research provides information about key market trends, mobile ad channels, case-studies.

According to J'son & Partners Consulting research the volume of Mobile Ad market equaled $ 1,39 mln. in 1Q 2009. It is expected that by the end of this year market will increase by 45% in comparison with 2008. In 2008 market showed double rise compared to 2007, despite the fact of overall ad market slowdown.

J'son & Partners Consulting presents the key results of conducted research includes analysis of current situation and regions (America, Europe and Asia), a detailed review of mobile the further market development. The research contains the analysis of such mobile VAS as SMS, transfer, mobile commerce, mobile marketing and mobile TV.

Size and structure of Russian mobile VAS market

J'son & Partners Consulting estimates the volume of the mobile VAS market in Russia at 94 bln RUR (3.8 bln USD) in 2008, and at 55 bln RUR ($1.681 bln; at average currency rate 32,71 rubles per 1 US dollar) in the 1st half of 2009.