MTS was ranked 89^th in the BrandZ Top 100 list with a brand value of $8.1 billion. MTS reported revenues of $8.2 billion in 2007, up 29% from 2006. The company had 85 million subscribers in the end of March 2008. MTS and its associates and subsidiaries are licensed to provide GSM services in Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Armenia and Belarus with a total population of more than 230 million.

Google topped the BrandZ Ranking of the world’s Top 100 Most Powerful Brands for the second consecutive year with a value of $86.1 billion followed by GE at $71.4 billion and Microsoft at $70.8 billion.

Millward Brown also named Russia’s 2nd largest mobile phone operator Beeline among “brands to watch in future brand rankings”.

Beeline and MTS were named the best Russian brands in Interbrand Zintzmeyer & Lux’s third annual ranking of 40 most valuable Russian brands in October 2007.

Major Russian mobile telecom operators Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), VimpelCom (Beeline), and Megafon held 41%, 27%, and 25% shares of mobile content market, respectively. According to research, the number of mobile Internet users reached 20.5 million, up 25% from 2006. Mobile Internet became the fastest growing sector of VAS in Q4 2007.

SMS and MMS made up $1.5 billion or 54 percent of VAS market. The remainder was divided among mobile content with 21 percent share, Internet - 20%, and basic VAS (voice mail, caller ID, etc.) - 5%.

Wappy.to has 1 million unique monthly users. The service was created in Denmark in 1999 as a tool to build WAP sites. The users currently upload and share their own generated video and photo content as well as create groups and chat to each other.

Playfon said in its press release it would use Wappy.to to build the first mobile social network in Russia. The site currently generates money from revenue sharing agreements with mobile telecom operators, for example, from Telia SurfPort in Sweden.

Through its partnerships with mobile telecom operators, Playfon reaches over 400 million mobile telecom subscribers in Russia and its neighboring countries as well as in the UK, Germany, Sweden, and Baltics.

According to Interbrand Zintzmeyer & Lux’s third annual ranking of 40 most valuable Russian brands arranged by brand value, Beeline and MTS are the most valuable brands in Russia with a value of $7.2 billion and $5.8 billion, respectively.

VimpelCom (Beeline) is the second largest mobile phone operator in Russia and CIS countries with 47.7 million subscribers as of June 30, 2007. VimpelCom was the first Russian company to list its shares on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in 1996, under the symbol VIP.

Beeline topped the brand rankings in Russia in both 2006 and 2005.

Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) is the largest mobile phone operator in Russia and the CIS countries with 78 million subscribers. MTS listed its shares on NYSE in July 2000, under the symbol MBT. MTS is majority-owned by Sistema, the largest private sector consumer services company in Russia and the CIS.

MegaFon, the brand behind Russia’s number three mobile phone operator is valued at $477 million and ranked 6th. RBC, the brand behind a Russian media holding with major exposure to Internet, is valued at $215 million and ranked 22nd.

MegaFon, Russia’s 3rd leading mobile telecom operator with over 34 million subscribers, has launched 3G services in the country’s 2nd largest city St. Petersburg. MegaFon’s tag line is ‘The Future Depends on You“.

MegaFon utilizes UMTS with High Speed Downlink Packet Access protocol that allows data transmission up to 3.6 Mbps. The network currently covers downtown St. Petersburg and one suburb as well as railway stations and airports. MegaFon charges $0.2 per minute of a video call. It also offers a special monthly tariff of $40 for unlimited calls within its network, 500 minutes of outgoing calls to mobiles and fixed lines and 500 Mb of data transmission. On average, 1 Mb of data traffic costs $0.06 that is several times less than the current cost of GPRS data traffic in GSM networks.

There are less than 3 million 3G-enabled mobile phones in Russia. The two leading Russian mobile telecom operators Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) and VimpelCom (BeeLine) are expected to launch their first 3G networks in 2008.