Yandex Search and Yandex Apps Available on Samsung Smartphones

Moscow, October 25, 2011. Under a strategic partnership agreement between Yandex and Samsung, Yandex’s Search will be preinstalled as a default search engine on all Samsung bada-powered smartphones for the CIS countries. Yandex’s services for mobile devices will also be integrated into these smartphones. Samsung smartphones with Yandex’s services will be available for purchase beginning in November.

Yandex began customizing its services for bada immediately after the platform appeared on the market. Yandex.Maps, Yandex.Mail, Yandex.Metro, Yandex.Market and a number of other popular Yandex apps currently available for this platform will be preinstalled on the new bada-powered smartphones. This will allow users to instantly find the place they are looking for, check the traffic map, or read an urgent email, while a widget on the phone’s main screen will inform them about current traffic conditions, weather and currency exchange rates. And of course, Yandex’s Search will provide answers to any kind of questions, even the most difficult ones. Yandex’s front page will also feature as the default home page in the browser on Samsung smartphones.

“The mobile sector is one of our key priorities. We are developing and have introduced various mobile applications for all major platforms. It’s exciting for us to work with a high-potential platform such as bada. With Samsung as a strategic partner, we can now offer bada fans a whole range of our services including mobile search”, says Tigran Khudaverdyan, Head of Web Portal and Mobile Services at Yandex.

“When choosing a smartphone, one of the important criteria is the availability of localized software for a particular model,” says Sergey Pevnev, Marketing Director at Samsung Electronics Russia. “In summer 2011, Samsung Electronics became the leader in the smartphone market in Russia. Our partnership with Yandex, the leader of the Russian search market, is a natural step that will allow us to reinforce our position”.

According to Samsung, bada-powered smartphones currently account for 40% of the company’s smartphone sales in Russia. In August 2011, the sales of bada-powered smartphones grew more than 10 times from August 2010. In November this year Samsung will release three new models of its Wave series - Wave 3, Wave M and Wave Y. Based on bada 2.0, each of these devices features Yandex’s search engine along with other services.

About Yandex

Yandex (NASDAQ: YNDX) is the leading internet company in Russia, operating the country’s most popular search engine and the most visited website. Yandex also operates in Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkey. Yandex’s mission is to answer any question internet users may have.

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