In an everlasting approach to overtake Google’s 61% mobile search market share, Yahoo is again stepping up it’s game and expanding it’s mobile presence by inking more search and display advertising deals with carriers in Asian markets. With these additions, Yahoo now has over 60 mobile search deals worldwide. All signed within the last 18 months.
Yahoo looks to be utilizing mobile expansion as a means to overtake it’s rivals, and in my opinion is doing a great job. We reported on OneConnect back in February, which is Yahoo’s mobile search platform that also incorporates a user’s social profiles and social footprint into an easy to read mobile application. In addition to this, Yahoo’s OnePlace aims to bring together a user’s frequently-checked information into a similar mobile application as well. All of this is an effort to be the first point-of-contact to the mobile web on behalf of Yahoo which is obviously the number one goal. Both OneConnect and OnePlace provide a beautiful user interface that, in my opinion, is easier to use and provides much more useful information than Google’s version. With some slight configuration, all the information you deem most important can be instantly available with the launch of a single mobile app.
Yahoo Go is the comprehensive application that brings together all of Yahoo’s mobile services into one easy to read application. The only downside I can see is the fact that a user must download the application instead of using it through a mobile browser. While this increases speed, and makes for a richer experience, I think people will shy away simply because they don’t want to take the time. Also, Google is just one click away without having to download anything.
One interesting statistic I came across was the fact that Yahoo Mail has 15 million unique mobile users in the U.S. each month, compared to 9 million uniques for Google mobile search, which is the next most popular mobile activity. With the heavy use of Yahoo Mail, it makes sense that Yahoo would want to get those users accessing their mail via the Yahoo Go mobile portal in hopes they would expand their usage to other Yahoo mobile services.
Overall I think it’s smart on Yahoo’s part to take the mobile search space so seriously, and to use it to propel itself ahead of the game in a new and competitive market. Expanding globally and making sure they’re first up on mobile carrier’s networks in regards to mobile services is definitely the key to mobile dominance.
