Yahoo Pulls Together Its Mobile Offering With Yahoo! Mobile

[engine]

Yahoo Pulls Together Its Mobile Offering With Yahoo! Mobile [yhoo.client.shareholder.com]

"We believe the new Yahoo! Mobile will transform the way millions of mobile users around the world will interact with the Internet," said Marco Boerries, executive vice president, Yahoo! Inc. "Yahoo! Mobile will enable users to create their own Internet starting point on their mobile device so they can better discover, connect to and stay informed about the people and things that are important to them."

A managed beta program for Yahoo! Mobile has started today. Consumers interested in participating should enter [mobile.yahoo.com...] into their phone's browser.

According to Yahoo, the mobile Web and iPhone(TM) versions of Yahoo! Mobile are planned to include the following features:-
Yahoo! oneSearch, Yahoo! oneConnect (including Email, Pulse, Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Address Book, Yahoo Calendar), Today, Yahoo News, Yahoo! onePlace.

In addition, the smartphone version will include the above functionality, plus:-
Yahoo! oneSearch with Voice, Maps, Opera Mini 4.2, and Widgets.

[nomis5]

This should worry Google. Already Yahoo is miles ahead of search for mobiles. Yahoo serps for mobiles make Google look silly. If Yahoo beef it up with more offerings then they will pull further ahead.

I find this strange. The idea that normal serps and other offerings are what mobile users want is preposterous. Mobile users want serps to return pages that are appropriate for the small screens on their mobiles. The same for other related offerings. Yahoo seem to have understood this whilst Google don't.

[swa66]

Take a look at the more modern mobile devices such as the iphone: it does just fine with regular content. IMHO the focus on mobile users with a special need is at best a transient phase, mobile users will get on the bandwagon of the normal content soon enough.

Let's not forget mobile devices have an expected lifetime of a year or two at most, and their evolution is fast paced, far faster than in the desktop/laptop world.

[CWebguy]

Don't tell me I have to start programming for phones now. [Beats head on keyboard]

[kanetrain]

If you own the G1 or the Iphone, you know why Google is focused on returning normal web results. You can use either of those phones to browse the web normally and view normal pages without many problems.
I prefer normal pages when searching and the android operating system with built in Google search is incredible.
Plus, most Google apps are built into the Android OS (calendar, gmail, maps, search, voice powered search, etc. etc.).

[iThink]

If you own the G1 or the Iphone...

Android/G1 and iphones are not very popular is Asia, which is a big and fast growing market. For example, iPhone is still not available in China through official channels because Apple still doesn't have a tie-up with a Chinese telco and China is the biggest cellphone market in the world. Only a few thousand iPhones have been sold through official channels in India since launch last year because of the very high cost of these handsets. AFAIK, G1 is still not available here in India, which is the second biggest mobile market in the world.

On the other hand likes of Nokia N-series handsets, new Nokia 5800 and Nokia E-series handsets are very popular over here in India and all over Asia. These handsets are used by a large number of people, including me, for email as well as for general browsing while on the move. Its seems that Yahoo is aware that there are a lot of untapped customers outside the USA and hence this is the right move. I hope that Yahoo mobile will work well with these smartphones and hence take some market share away from Google.