Yahoo Rolls Out Mobile Applications
Jacksonville – Yahoo’s mobile division has rolled out Yahoo Mobile, a new Yahoo home page for mobile Internet users. The new page strives to be a one stop access center for a variety of Yahoo Internet enhancement features. People connecting to the Internet from mobile devices can access the new service immediately at http://new.m.yahoo.com. The page is available to any set that is HTML-enabled for web browsing. Apple iPhone users who wish to gain access to the new home page need to purchase and download an application that’s currently available at the Apple Store. http://www.apple.com/iphone/appstore.
The new service will initially be available only to wireless users in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, France, Germany, India, Indonesia and the Philippines. Other countries will be included later in the the year. Yahoo’s move is widely seen as an attempt to snap up a larger slice of the mobile applications segment of wireless Internet pie. Yahoo’s vision seems to be that a re-tooled and consolidated entry point to their Internet portal will give them a better competitive foothold against the more powerfully entrenched portals offered by Google and Microsoft.
Yahoo Mobile provides centralized access to and increased leveraging for a number of unique Yahoo helper features such as Yahoo oneSearch: A web search enhancement tool that provides search parameter improvement suggestions as you type, bases search results on a searcher’s geographic local, and allows the user to enter spoken search terms in a normal speaking voice. Yahoo oneConnect: is a tool to provide quick and easy connections to a variety of communications sources such as email, IM and a host of social networks such as Facebook® and MySpace®. Yahoo onePlace: A tool to help users bring more logical organization to their links, and get faster access to the most important and frequently used ones.
In announcing the new product Marco Boerries, Yahoo executive vice president said: “We believe the new Yahoo Mobile will transform the way millions of mobile users around the world will interact with the internet. 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.” Reaction to the new product from most news and technical evaluation sources range from mildly positive to nearly glowing. The question still remains, though — can even the most ingenious technical and user friendly innovations from Yahoo fight off the powerful, entrenched resources of Google and Microsoft?
