Yango Spark

2023: Platform launch in Africa and the Middle East

At the end of December 2023, the international brand Yandex"" Yango launched in the countries of MENA (Middle East and North) Africa the Yango Spark^[1] service] with films and TV shows, music and mini-games. While the application works in,,, UAE,, and Saudi Arabia Qatar, Egypt Bahrain Oman Kuwait supports English and Arabic.

Kommersant drew attention to the appearance of the Yango Spark application on Google Play. Yango confirmed to the newspaper the launch of the service, but noted that it is in test mode. According to the source of the publication in the media market, the full-scale work of the platform will begin before the end of 2023. As a legal entity, Yango Spark is listed Funtech Loyalty Card Services L.L.C, registered next door to the Dubai office of Yango, the publication notes.

Yango launched Yango Spark service in MENA countries

Yango Spark has a built-in Arabic-language voice AI assistant Yasmina. It uses technologies created by the Yandex Alice Center for the Development of Virtual Assistants and Robotics. According to the source of the publication, the subscription to Yango Spark will be similar to Yandex Plus and will provide access to all services of the company.

In 13 Arab countries, by the end of 2023, there are only 15 million subscribers of online video services, Dmitry Kolesov, director of the new technologies department at J'son and Partners Consulting, told the publication.

We can say that the market is only being formed, but there is a big problem for new participants - high cultural barriers of entry, "he said.

One of the newspaper's sources considers the main issue to be how the service will develop in conditions when most of the media market has already been shared by Spotify, Netflix (available in the UAE with VPN) and other participants. These projects already have agreements with foreign copyright holders, while Yango may "have problems due to Russian origin," the source said.^[2]

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