Yandex , Russia’s largest search engine, is expanding to Hungary with an app that promises to help users navigate Budapest’s public transport system, according to Bloomberg.
Yandex.Transport uses GPS to track buses, trams and ferries in real time, and estimates their arrival times, according to a statement Tuesday. The app, which has reached 2.9 million monthly users in Russia and former Soviet republics since 2014.
Yandex, which leads Google in Russian Internet search market share, is seeking to diversify into new countries and mobile services, including those based on geolocation, to keep growing in the future. The app started in Finland, its first non-Russian speaking market, in July and is getting traction there, according to Yandex.
In foreign markets where Yandex isn’t present as a search engine, it plans to monetize its app by connecting it to Facebook’s Audience Network and sharing revenue from ads shown to Yandex.Transport users, the company said.
European rivals include Israeli startup Moovit, Lithuania-based Trafi and HERE, the former Nokia maps unit acquired by German carmakers last year.
Burra was created as a platform for consolidating IT services companies in Southeast Europe, with a commercial focus on Western Europe and the United States. Its first members, Devōt, Tacta and CoreLine, continue to run their existing businesses while integration is planned gradually, primarily through new projects. Sven Marušić says the aim is not to turn founders into corporate employees, but to build a larger organisation in which they remain shareholders and drivers of growth.
Telecom operators are no longer using AI only for network optimisation and routine operations. They are applying it to faster product development and customer conversations. Matija Ražem says AI enables prototypes in hours, quicker market testing, and automation of many standard support questions. The next step may be a world where personal digital agents interact with agents from telecoms, banks and other large organisations.
ReversingLabs is developing agent-based approaches to security operations, while warning that the expertise needed to manage such systems will become even more critical.
