Yahoo Inc is expanding its presence beyond the PC, moving onto Web-enabled cellphones and other mobile devices so users can access their customized content while un-tethered.
Yahoo Go Mobile, a new service that is set to be launched at the International Consumer Electronics Show, is the latest examples of the growing trend of "get your information anytime, anywhere."
Chief Executive Terry Semel said the new products, marketed under the newly established Yahoo Go brand, would propel his company beyond the Web browser and onto phone and television screens.
Many of the features and services that Yahoo has been amassing in recent years, beyond the e-mail already available on many so-called smartphones, can now follow its 400 million users wherever they go.
Connecting the Internet to any device you might imagine is the next stage of the Web, Semel told the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the largest U.S. electronics convention. Consumers want that ability to take that information with them wherever they go.
The products include Yahoo Go Mobile and Yahoo Go TV. A third product, Yahoo Go Desktop, will tie the phone and TV services back to the most common way of using Yahoo services, which far and away remains the personal computer.
Anyone with a Yahoo account can have their customized data they now get through the Web portal load itself into whichever device they carry. The information — from news to restaurant reviews to personal contacts and appointments — will be synchronized through whatever data network they may be using — cellular or Wi-Fi, for example.
The phone service: is a logical extension of Yahoo’s efforts to become a standard channel on mobile phone screens instead of being available only on special phones via Web browsers.
The television plan: which represents a far more ambitious and early-stage effort will target consumers buying PC-linked TVs with fast Internet connections.
We want to connect to the three screens of consumer’s lives: the mobile phone you always have with you, the big screen TV and the PC screen you have in the office, Marco Boerries, Yahoo’s senior vice president in charge of the project, said ahead of Semel’s speech.
Yahoo Go Mobile will work on any cellular network, but for now, only on Nokia’s Series 60 line of smartphones.
Yahoo Go Mobile will be available in the United States in coming weeks. Consumers buying certain Nokia 6630, 6680, 6681 and N70 devices — all so-called Series 60 smartphones — will receive the Yahoo Go Mobile service pre-installed. The product encompasses a new user interface designed to fit on the small screen of a smartphone.
Yahoo is also working with U.S. phone partners AT&T Inc. and Cingular Wireless. Support for additional mobile devices is planned.
Yahoo will launch Yahoo Go Mobile with AT&T and Cingular in the traditional 13-state local phone service region of AT&T in the southern and western United States. It will also be available in a handful of other unspecified markets, they said.
Cingular is the largest U.S. wireless carrier. It is jointly owned by AT&T and BellSouth Corp., the No. 3 U.S. provider of local phone service.
Yahoo Go marks the latest step in a four-year program through which Yahoo has formed broadband marketing partnerships with major communications carriers in the United States, Canada and Britain, executives said.
Within the 13-state AT&T core service region, the partners will offer a co-branded Go Mobile service for existing AT&T-Yahoo broadband customers to link their home Internet access with their mobile phones.
Consumers want communications that revolve around them, not the other way around, Scott Helbing, AT&T chief consumer marketer, said in a joint statement.
Yahoo is also working with Motorola Inc to bring Yahoo Go to those phones, said Boerries. Bringing the service to Java-based phones will come later, but Boerries could not specify when.
Yahoo’s music and video services is not yet available through Yahoo Go Mobile but may be added later, company officials said.
Another version of Yahoo Go for PC-connected televisions, called Yahoo Go TV, will be launched in coming months, the company said. It will similarly let Yahoo users access much of their personalized Web data as long as the TV is connected to the Internet.
Yahoo Go TV will allow consumers to link their existing base of Yahoo contacts and resources directly into their televisions, allowing them to watch digital photos and to check news, sports or other Yahoo services from the same account they use on their computer or mobile phone.
Instead of the plethora of links now viewable at once on a user’s personalized Yahoo home page, Yahoo Go streamlines the main menu content into major categories such as search, mail, news and calendar, which users could then scroll through.
Roughly 10 countries, including Britain, Germany, France, Singapore, India, Malaysia, the Philippines and Australia, are to follow in the first quarter, a spokeswoman said.
Separately, Yahoo announced a worldwide deal to pre-install e-mail, instant messaging, address book and scheduling applications on millions of new Motorola Inc. mobile phones, including the sleek Razr model, during the first quarter.
The Yahoo Go application is downloadable for free at Yahoo’s Web site.
However, the Sunnyvale, California-based Internet giant says it has also signed a deal with Nokia Corp so the cellphone maker will be pre-installing the Yahoo Go program on select mobile devices. Cingular Wireless also plans to promote Yahoo Go.