Russian tech group Yandex launches own smartphone !!!

Russian tech group Yandex launches own smartphone

 

Russian technology group Yandex has launched its first smartphone, as the company seeks to leverage its dominant position in apps and services into hardware sales.

 

Yandex, which runs the most popular search engine in Russia, hopes its Android-based Yandex.Phone will bind users to its suite of products, from food delivery and ride-hailing apps to marketplace and music streaming platforms, as competition rises for online services.

 

Rivals are racing for market share in Russia’s fledgling e-commerce industry, where Yandex and Russian lender Sberbank have teamed up to compete against international giants Alibaba and Amazon.

 

“We built Yandex.Phone to offer Russian users a smartphone that is equipped with all the localised tools that help users better navigate their daily routines . . . and the most widely used Yandex applications,” said Fedor Yezhov, Yandex’s chief vice-president of ecosystem products.

 

The device will go on sale on Thursday at 17,990 roubles ($270), significantly less than comparable products from Samsung and Apple. 

Samsung and China’s Huawei spar for top spot in Russia’s mobile phone market and together account for around 50 per cent of sales, according to research by IDC, with Apple in third place.

 

Yandex’s push into handsets comes five years after mobile services provider Yota launched YotaPhone, a Russian device billed as the country’s answer to Apple and Samsung. 

But the smartphone flopped and was beset by allegations that Russian “troll factories” used bots to try to promote positive reviews of the product.

 

Mr Yezhov declined to give any forecasts or targets for sales or market share for the Yandex.Phone when questioned by reporters on Wednesday.

 

“We are generally sceptical of any late-to-market comers with ‘me too’ products,” said Alexander Kazbegi, managing director and head of telecoms research at Renaissance Capital.

 

“Price might be one attraction of the new phone, however, for its popularity it has to offer similar user experience as the better known competitors do,” Mr Kazbegi said. He added that instalment plans offered by network operators had reduced the entry-level cost for smartphone users.

 

Many internet companies, including Google and Facebook, share Yandex’s desire to move into hardware. 

The companies want to lock customers into their portfolio of products and offer richer experiences by controlling the entire mobile platform themselves.

 

But none have made the jump easily.

 

Facebook tried to develop its own smartphone about eight years ago, but it was never launched. A subsequent effort to create a “Facebook Phone” by building on top of Android failed to catch on.

 

Even Google, whose Android operating system runs on the vast majority of smartphones, has struggled to generate meaningful sales of its own Pixel devices, which are now into their third generation.

 

In China, Tencent and Baidu both briefly tried to create their own smartphone operating systems, but shut them down after just a couple of years, given the overwhelming popularity of Android. 

 

Nasdaq-listed Yandex also hopes the device will boost demand for its AI assistant Alice, its alternative to the likes of Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa. Yandex said Alice would offer 34,000 different tasks on the new device.

 

At a launch event on Wednesday in Moscow, Yandex said the device would use the Android 8.1 platform, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 630 processor and feature a 5.65-inch Full HD+ screen, a fingerprint sensor and dual rear 12 megapixel and 5 megapixel cameras and a 5 megapixel front camera. 

 

Yandex’s search dominance in Russia and many former Soviet republics makes it the world’s fifth-largest search engine. It has used that clout to squeeze out Uber’s local taxi and food delivery services.

 

But it faces stiff competition in Russia’s small but growing online retail market. Alibaba and Mail.ru, Yandex’s biggest rival, recently formed a $2bn joint venture to set up AliExpress Russia, while Amazon is yet to move in to the country, one of the last remaining major undeveloped e-commerce markets.