Yandex of Russia to power Samsung Smart TVs and smartphones

Ever heard of Yandex before? Neither have I prior to writing this post, but at least now we both know that Yandex is a search engine in Russia with an extremely minimalist home page. South Korean consumer electronics player Samsung has inked a deal with Yandex, where their strategic partnership in the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries will see Yandex’s TV widget being incorporated into Samsung Smart TVs, while such services will also hit bada 2.0-powered smartphones from Samsung down the road.

I don’t suppose that this bit of news is going to resonate with the rest of the world outside of CIS, but there are still a considerable number of people living there, so for Yandex to further extend their influence in the living room as well as mobile devices would be a boon for the company.

The widget for Samsung’s Smart TV will deliver access to all services available on Yandex’s front page, ranging from Yandex.Traffic, Yandex.Afisha, Yandex.News and Yandex.TV. [Press Release]