Internet-company Yandex has bought licenses on digital maps from all over the world from one of the largest suppliers of map data NAVTEQ, the newspaper Kommersant reports.

NAVTEQ has given Yandex maps of all countries, but the most detailed are the maps of Europe, America, Australia, and developed countries of Asia. These maps reflect all regional highways, city road networks, streets and houses. The new content will be gradually added to Yandex.Maps and also launched in mobile application of all main platforms.

Before now, Yandex offered maps of Russia, the Ukraine, Belorussia and Kazakhstan. Last fall Yandex published at yandex.com.tr the Turkey map, also purchased from NAVTEQ.

NAVTEQ is the producer of digital maps and data for geoinformation systems. The headquarters are located in Chicago, the company has 200 branches in 54 countries of the world. 100% NAVTEQ is owned by Finland company Nokia.

“Yandex.Maps” is the largest site of online maps in Russia. According to Comscore, last December it accounted for 71% shares of the audience of similar services. Globally, Yandex is used by 3.8% of all users of map services, surpassed by Google Maps (64%), MapQuest (8.4%), Baidu Map (7.7%), Bing Maps (4.8%).

The price of the deal between Yandex and NAVTEQ has yet to be disclosed. A manager of one of Internet-companies believes the price could total $1.5m. “However, if we consider that, according to official information, Yandex gets additional benefits, such as using maps in their API, the amount paid must have been much bigger – about $5m,” he added.