Barcelona — Seizing the opportunity at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Tuesday, Yahoo unveiled a revamped and reorganized its mobile service that will offer an iPhone-like experience for people who cannot or will not splash out for the iconic but pricey Apple device as times get hard. The smartphone service will be released in three versions: one for the mobile Web, one for the iPhone, and one for other smartphones, which will allow users to access e-mail, social networking sites, and news, plus Yahoo’s OneSearch with Voice, which accepts spoken search requests.
The newly announced service will debut at the end of March in a form downloadable to any phone with a Web browser or will be available from May in custom versions for hundreds of smartphones from Nokia, RIM, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola, for devices that run Windows Mobile — and for Apple’s iPhone itself. The beta-test version, offered this week, is available to a limited number of users.
“There is an increasing number of consumers out there who are not Apple iPhone users but want a rich starting experience,” Marco Boerries, the head of Yahoo’s mobile division, infromed Reuters in an interview.
He elated the new service’s open environment and the adaptability for users to create a customized experience will “transform” the interaction with the Internet for millions of users.
Speaking to news media he said, the new service is intended for the many users who want a compelling, iPhone-like Web experience, but who do not possess an iPhone.
Yahoo Mobile provides a front page with colorful, boxy icons similar to the iPhone’s for launching popular applications such as a Web browser, mail, news, weather and social network sites like Facebook. Additionally, users will also have the alternative to easily add any software or Web sites they choose to download on their phones.
The mobile Web and iPhone applications will offer search, buzz, and OneConnect, which will empower users to access e-mail from Yahoo, Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail, and AOL. It features Pulse for access to social networking sites, Yahoo Messenger, and Yahoo News, among other features.
The company plans to promote Yahoo Mobile through 70 major operator partnerships it has made to extend its reach to 850 million mobile subscribers worldwide, some of which already offer Yahoo services. Essentially, Boerries has said, the new service targets every phone with a good Web browser.
Boerries sketches the picture of the universe of phones that can effectively run Yahoo Mobile as “every phone that is supplied in the last two years that has a decent HTML-capable browser.” He added: “We do not want to make lowest common denominator stuff.”
All the versions will have Yahoo’s oneSearch, selected top news stories, the regular news section, and oneConnect, which consists of Email, Pulse, Messenger, Address Book and Calendar. Pulse offers ready access to leading social networks, including Bebo, Dopplr, Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, Last.fm, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube.
Ken Dulaney, vice president of mobile computing at Gartner, said Yahoo had a lot of challenges with its new service, not the least of which was supporting and adding value on all those devices.
This newest version of the Yahoo Mobile service, he said, is “intended to be an app store.” But, he added, it is not clear what an iPhone user or other users of new smartphones gain by using Yahoo Mobile instead of that device’s native capabilities.
Boerries stated that last year’s intermittent discussions with would-be buyer Microsoft had not significantly distracted his team, and said he had kept his key staff together for years.
After some initial time-lag in introducing services such as Yahoo Go, Boerries professed relief that his fuller vision of putting the Web on phones had arrived on time: “It is really, for me, making it all come together.”
“This looks like an outstanding replacement of Yahoo Go.”