But the advantage of this, it seems to me, is that if you regularly type in MORE than three languages (such as English, Russian, and Hebrew), everything is done by software-switching.Unfortunately, in mid-1990s we saw dramatic spread of the American standard of computers, whose keyboard has no features to support languages other than English.
And even if you type in just two languages (such as Russian and English), using software-switching allows you to switch conventiently between a phonetic mapping (as Hanna noted on the Yamaha keyboard) and the "standard" layout. (For instance, English speakers learning Russian with the intent of studying/working in Russia should really try to become accustomed to the "йцуке" layout, and Russians learning English should get used to the QWERTY layout. But in both cases, using a phonetically-mapped keyboard can be much easier at first!)
By the way, is there a common name for the standard Russian arrangement, analogous to QWERTY? I always mentally think of it as the "ФЫВА layout" -- because when I learned touch-typing in English as a kid, the teacher drilled it into my head to think of ASDF as the "home keys" for the left hand.