Yahoo! to Reach nearly 100 Million Subscribers Through these New Partnerships, Taking a Leadership Position in Mobile Search in Asia
Internet giant Yahoo! on Wednesday announced partnership agreements with six leading Asian mobile phone operators with a combined subscriber base of nearly 100 million.
Yahoo Inc has said that six Asian mobile-phone operators, including LG Telecom Ltd and Malaysia’s Maxis Communications Bhd, will use its search software as part of Yahoo’s efforts to boost advertising sales.
The agreements, announced on the sidelines of the CommunicAsia 2007 industry fair, focuses on the distribution of Yahoo’s mobile search service known as Yahoo! One Search, first launched in the United States in January and later in Asia in May of this year.
The six mobile operators are Globe Telecom (Philippines), Idea Cellular Limited (India), LG Telecom (Korea), Maxis Communications Berhad (Malaysia), PT Telekomunikasi Selular "Telkomsel" (Indonesia) and Taiwan Mobile (Taiwan).
Taiwan Mobile Co, Idea Cellular Ltd, PT Telekomunikasi Selular and Globe Telecom Inc will also use the OneSearch software, the owner of the second most-used Internet search engine said in a statement yesterday.
By distributing Yahoo! oneSearch these six major operators will make it easier for people to search for and find better results and instant answers on their mobile devices.
Yahoo seeking to narrow the gap with Google Inc., targets companies that want to promote products and services to phone subscribers, tapping a market that’s growing faster than personal computers. Mobile phones outsold PCs last year by more than four to one, researcher Gartner Inc said.
Yahoo! One Search gives mobile phone users quick access to news, Web images, financial information, weather conditions, Flickr and Web and mobile Web sites, as well as makes it easy to navigate to other web sites, a company press statement said.
“Operators want to build services that increase data usage,” David Ko, general manager of Yahoo’s Connected Life Asia business, said in an interview in Singapore at the CommunicAsia telecommunications show.
Ko said that the agreement “gives us a potential reach of almost 100 million subscribers.”
These partnerships with leading operators in Asia help extend Yahoo!’s clear leadership in the mobile space, said Ko. “Partners are essential to our consumer-centric mobile strategy and key relationships will continue to evolve and deliver great Internet experiences to our respective customers,” Ko added.
Yahoo had 3.9 million users for its mobile search engine in the US in February, behind Google’s 5.3 million, according to research firm M:Metrics.
Google accounted for 48 percent of Internet searches in the US in March, which is more than the totals of Yahoo and Microsoft Corp combined.
One Search is part of the new version of Yahoo Go, which comes pre-installed on some handsets including those made by Nokia Oyj, Motorola Inc and Samsung Electronics Co, said Jason Coates, a Yahoo spokesman based in Singapore.
Yahoo! One Search is now available in 14 countries around the world (Canada, France, Germany, Indonesia, India, Italy, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, United Kingdom, United States and Vietnam) and will soon be available in Korea and Taiwan.
These strategic partnerships demonstrate Yahoo!’s commitment to becoming number one in mobile services and establishes the company’s strong early leadership position across Asia in mobile audience reach, mobile search services and mobile monetization.
For information on Yahoo! One Search go to http://mobile.yahoo.com