Answers to Rishi Mallik's questions about Firefox community in Russia.
What is the current status of the Firefox community?
Excellent 
What are the major tech companies?
Leading consumer software vendors:
- ABBYY - OCR / ICR / OMR, data capture and language software (FineReader, PDF Transformer, Lingvo, etc.)
- Kaspersky - information security solutions (Kaspersky Anti-Virus, Kaspersky Internet Security, etc.)
What are the major ISPs?
The market is very fragmented. There are in fact many regional markets generally dominated by Svyazinvest (public fixed telecom holding) companies. Broadband access is in active development. Regional Svyazinvest companies launched their major ADSL offers for general public in 2005.
Share of broadband users according to TNS Web Index May 2006 and TNS Web Index April 2007 (in Russian):
April 2007 May 2006 Moscow 85% 74% Russia ? ~30%
Major operators on consumer market of broadband access by iKS-Consulting, December 2006:
Company (Brand) Subscribers, '000 1 MTU-Intel (Stream) 394 2 Komkor-TV (Akado) 120 3-4 VolgaTelecom (J) 110 3-4 Corbina Telecom 110 5 CenterTelecom (Domolink) 104 6 Uralsvyazinform (Utel) 99 7 North Western Telecom (@vangard) 90 8 Central Telegraph (Qwerty) 75 9 Dalsvyaz (Disly) 74 10 Southern Telecom Company (Disel) 68
MTU-Intel, Komkor-TV, Corbina Telekom, and Central Telegraph operate mainly on Moscow market. VolgaTelecom, CenterTelecom, Uralsvyazinform, North Western Telecom, Central Telegraph, Dalsvyaz, and Southern Telecom Company are Svyazinvest companies.
Moscow broadband market by Comnews Research, I quarter 2007 (in Russian):
Company 1Q2007 1Q2006 MTU-Intel (Stream) 35% 43% Corbina Telecom 14% 3% Komkor-TV (Akado) 9% 6% Central Telegraph (Qwerty) 7% 7%
Who are the major tech leaders?
Leading internet companies:
- Yandex - search, multiservice portal
- Rambler - search, multiservice portal
- Mail.ru - e-mail, multiservice portal
Revenue:
2006 2005 $ mln. $ mln. Yandex 72.6 35.1 Source in Russian Rambler 37.7 21.9 Source in Russian Mail.ru 25-30 17.3 Source in Russian
LiveInternet.ru search engines statistics, June 2007 (in Russian):
Users from Russia All users Yandex 59.8% 49.1% Rambler 17.2% 15.0% Google 12.2% 23.9% Search.Mail.ru 6.8% 5.9%
What are the major tech gatherings?
What are the major tech publications?
Ratings of Periodicals on the basis of R-TGI survey, Computer Press by COMCON, 2006:
AIR (Average Issue Readership) in 1000s of people and in % of Russia population aged 10 and over
thousand people % Total 62 463 100.0 Weeklies Computerra 1105 1.8 Upgrade 420 0.7 Computer World 249 0.4 Fortnightly Editions Game Land 395 0.6 Monthly Editions PC World 734 1.2 Haker 636 1.0 Home PC 467 0.7 ComputerPress 373 0.6
What are some barriers to entry for Firefox? (ex: governmental, compatibility)
Where do most people use Firefox? (ex: home, office, school, internet cafes)
Internet in Russia by Public Opinion Foundation, Spring 2007:
Spring 2007 Spring 2005 home 60% 48% office 39% 40% friends 15% 19% school 12% 15% internet cafe 8% 12% other 2% 5%
Internet Monitoring by ROMIR Monitoring, I quarter 2007 (in Russian):
home 67% office 40% friends/relatives 13% anywhere (cellphone/notebook) 10% computer class (school/university) 7% internet cafe 7% friends'/relatives' office 5% post office/library 3%
Firefox usage share tends to be highest over the weekend (at home?). Same true for IE 7 and Opera 9.
What are the most popular uses of the internet here? (ex: search, games, research)
Internet-users about Internet activity and popular web-sites by ROMIR Monitoring, II quarter 2006:
Searching for information 85% Downloading files 75% Instant messaging 56% Chats, forums, news-groups 35% Internet shopping 26% Playing network games 11% Banking/financial transactions 13% Blogging 11% Voice-message programs 8%
What are the major competitors to Firefox? (ex: IE, Safari, Maxthon)
Internet Explorer and Opera
LiveInternet.ru browser statistics, June 2007 (in Russian):
Browser Users from Russia All users Explorer 6 66.3% 59.9% Opera 9 10.2% 8.9% Explorer 7 8.4% 11.8% Firefox 2 6.2% 9.7% Firefox 1 2.4% 3.0% Explorer 5 2.3% 1.8% Opera 8 2.1% 1.7%
How do things virally spread? (ex: Digg, Slashdot)
There are some Digg-like sites, but they are not very popular yet
LiveJournal (?)
What are the top universities?
What are the top social networking sites?
- Vkontakte.ru - network for classmates, inspired by Facebook
- Odnoklassniki.ru - Classmates-like site
- MoiKrug.ru (acquired by Yandex) - LinkedIn-like professional network
How is software distributed? (ex: CDs, spyware, downloads)
- Downloads from local networks
- Downloads from internet
- CDs
Downloads from local networks and CD distribution are especially common in regions, because of higher cost of internet traffic than in Moscow.
The level of software piracy by Kommersant, May 16, 2007:
The software piracy rate in Russia dropped from 87 percent in 2003 to 80 percent in 2006.