The Moscow Times reports that software makers and businesses in Russia arebeginning to identify the importance of mobile apps and its popularity is gaining ground.
The daily quotes, Alexander Zveryev, general director of business software maker e-Legion, as saying “On the Russian market, which simply ‘exploded’ after the start of official iPad sales, more and more companies are looking at mobile applications as a new medium for managing loyalty, a space for advertising, a way of digitizing business processes and so on.”
“The mobile applications market is one of the fastest growing in the world,” Zveryev added. “There are already more smartphones in the world than personal computers. For the most part, this is thanks to Apple — they worked out how to get around the problem of piracy and how to give small companies the chance to make money by creating mobile applications.”
Noting the changing landscape in mobile services and usage, Alexander Savin, head of mobile advertising at Mail.ru Group, termed mobile apps as one of the ‘key solutions’ for businesses.
Major players in the market have noticed the development and are strategizing to seize the opportunities available. Microsoft will start the official sales of mobile phones with Windows Phone 7 in Russia in the second half of this year.
“Already existing applications — e-mail, calendar, address book and mobile Office — will be developed to meet the specific demands of the corporate market, including improved integration with SharePoint and Office 365,” said Vladimir Kolesnikov, a software development expert for Microsoft Russia’s strategic technologies department.
In 2010, Russia had 6 million smartphone and tablet users and the figure is expected to jump to triple by the end of this year.
As the smartphone and tablet market is dominated by Apple, therefore iPhone app developers can be the biggest gainers in Russia.
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