Yandex released Yandex.Store, an alternative Android app store, and a new version of the 3D interface for Android-based smartphones, Yandex.Shell. These two products are part of the alternative mobile ecosystem developed by Yandex, which the company is announcing at Mobile World Congress 2013.
Yandex.Store opens with over 50,000 apps in its catalogue, which range from social networking, entertainment and games to news, business and finance. The Yandex.Store app store, offered as a native client, will be installed on mobile devices shipped to the Russian market by a number of device manufacturers, including 3Q, Explay, Oppo, PocketBook, Qumo, teXet, Wexler. The deployment and usage of Yandex.Store is available under flexible terms of a licence agreement and does not involve any additional fees. The manufacturers that choose to use Yandex's app store under their own brand name on their mobile phones receive technical support from the launch and further on. Moreover, revenues from app sales are shared with Yandex's Yandex.Store partners.
One of Russia's largest mobile operators, MegaFon, has already created a mobile app store, GetUpps! (getupps.ru), which uses the technology platform and apps pool of Yandex.Store along with its own developments. All apps in the Yandex.Store app pool are verified by Kaspersky Lab. The Yandex.Store user interface is available in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Turkish, Ukrainian and Russian, with more languages to be added soon. The developer interface of Yandex.Store is available in Russian and English.
Together with the new mobile app store, Yandex is offering device manufacturers and mobile operators a new version ofYandex.Shell, a user interface platform for customising Android-based smartphones. Since the announcement in February 2012, Yandex.Shell has been downloaded more than 1 million times. Yandex.Shell transforms the Android home screen into a 3D space, has a push panel technology, which allows sending customised panels and skins straight to the phone over the air, and gives manufacturers an unprecedented degree of control over what their phone looks and feels like to the end customer. The new version of Yandex.Shell also features a new dialer and address book. It is offered with a customised installation package and a default layout configuration. Yandex.Shell for Android is available in English and distributed to device manufacturers for free under a licensing agreement.
