MTS will close its app store

MTS has announced its plans to close the MTS Store service. 

On November 21, 2012 MTS closes its own application store for Android devices “MTS Store”. It was launched by the Russian operator together with Vodafone in March 2011. 

The store currently includes about 7000 applications. The main advantage of the service is that funds for the purchase are debited directly from the subscriber’s personal account. 

In the third quarter of this year, MTS earned 800 million rubles on mobile applications (due to subscription fees and transaction fees). Perhaps most of this amount does not fall on the MTS store, but on income from pre-installed applications on the company’s branded smartphones.