San Francisco — Yahoo today unveiled a revamped mobile portal, an open and highly-personalized mobile starting point to the Internet, on both the mobile Web and as an Apple iPhone app, designed to help consumers stay up to date on the latest events, stay connected and stay informed through their mobile devices on a number of different social networks. The new portal employs search at the forefront and then offers full customization so that users can add widgets from third party sites such as Gmail and eBay.
The revamped mobile portal would soon replace the present http://m.Yahoo.com portal but not Yahoo!’s oneSearch search engine. Additionally, the company will screen the Yahoo! Messenger application that is shortly-to-be-released for the iPhone, which will provide iPhone users in the United States with the No. 1 Messenger service in the country.
Announced at Mobile World Congress in February, Yahoo! Mobile for the Web is can now be accessed through more than 300 devices around the globe with HTML-enabled mobile browsers by visiting http://new.m.yahoo.com, while the Yahoo! Mobile iPhone app is now available in the Apple iPhone App Store.
“Consumers around the globe are demanding compelling mobile Internet services that offer increased personalization,” said David Ko, senior vice president, Yahoo! Mobile. “To further take benefit over the market potential and continue our mobile leadership, we created Yahoo! Mobile, a dynamic starting point enabling consumers to discover the world around them, stay connected through a variety of communication services, and customize content to define their Internet experience on mobile devices.”
Yahoo! has currently partnered with Nokia and the oneSearch search client is the default setting on many mobile phones.
Both are currently available in eight countries across Europe, Asia and the Americas, including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany, France, India, Indonesia and the Philippines, with additional localized versions expected to launch over the next several months.
Yahoo Mobile combines together Yahoo oneSearch with the full range of Yahoo properties, such as news, calendar, weather, movies, Flickr, sports, etc. Feeds from MyYahoo can easily be added as well.
The Yahoo! OneConnect app, which is planned to be launched in the UK in Q2, can be downloaded onto your phone and is compatible with Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Bebo and other social networks.
By utilizing the application you will be able to view the latest Tweets on Twitter, alongside images that your friends have recently uploaded on Flickr and even messages left on your wall on Facebook, all without having to navigate to the different sites.
With a compelling features, rich design and interactivity that maximizes the capabilities of today’s mobile devices, Yahoo! Mobile offers an open environment within which consumers can combine together their favorite content and services from across the Internet.
Addressing the Web 2.0 Kongress in Munich today, Michael Stenberg, Partner Director Central & Eastern Europe, Yahoo! Connected Life, gave the audience a tour of the new portal.
The move is focused on the Yahoo! Open Strategy (Y!OS) which the company hopes will encourage developers and publishers to spend more time engaging with the portal. Yahoo! told developers in April 2008 that Y!OS would allow their applications to be distributed via the Yahoo! websites as well as the developers own.
Y!OS has been one of the emerging powers behind the removal of Yahoo! social networks Y!360 and Mash as well as the controversial changes to the Yahoo! Profile system. Yahoo!’s aim is to develop a single social platform that reaches across Yahoo!’s web and mobile properties.