14 Nov, 2007
After tying up with six mobile operators in significant markets across Asia since June, Yahoo! announced expanded distribution of its Yahoo! oneSearch product to nine more Asian mobile operators. They are Aircel, BPL Mobile, BSNL (India), DiGi Telecommunications (Malaysia), PT EX- CELCOMINDO, Pt Hutchison CP Telecom, PT Indosat (Indonesia), PCCW Mobile HK (Hong Kong) and Starhub (Singapore).
The oneSearch product was designed to take into account that a mobile user’s mindset on mobile device is different from when on a desktop PC and that besides device constraints, users are usually unaware of the content and apps available to them. Also, “the only thing that matters in mobile search is relevance,” said Ojas Rege, VP for global mobile products, Connected Life. “Telcos in this area have potential to take new models of discovery like oneSearch and bring them to users,” Rege added, stating that Yahoo!'s current strategic distribution which is very “operator-centric.” Yahoo! oneSearch is also a key driver for Yahoo!'s mobile advertising which Rege says is still in its infancy stage. Having introduced the capability for advertisers to buy display advertising since the start of the year, Yahoo! will be expanding to enable sponsored listings; currently available only in the UK, US and Japan; in more countries in Asia. Rege added, “Next year, one of the big areas for product development will be new models for advertising” and also that 2008 will be the catalyst year for mobile advertising. Yahoo! also announced in Macau the availability of Yahoo!Go2.0 in Chinese language for the Taiwan market.
