Yahoo! Mobile Extends Asia-Pacific Reach
Five Mobile Operators Signing New Yahoo! oneSearch Partnerships
Yahoo! has just announced several new mobile initiatives for the Asia Pacific region, including five new Yahoo! oneSearch partnerships with leading mobile operators including Mahanagar Telephon Nigam Limited (MTNL, India), Hong Kong CSL Limited (CSL), Smart Communications Inc. (Smart, Philippines), Digital Mobile Phlis, Inc. (SUN Cellular, Philippines) and Vibo Telecom Inc. (Vibo, Taiwan), as well as strategic mobile advertising partnerships with Idea Cellular Ltd. (India) and Maxis Communications Bhd (Malaysia).
Additionally,
Yahoo! announced localized versions of Yahoo! Go 3.0 for India, Australia and Southeast Asia, including a local language version for Indonesia, and an English version of Yahoo! oneSearch with voice that recognizes regional accents. The company also announced the launch of new mobile widgets for the Asia Pacific region including Yahoo! Cricket, Yahoo! Answers and Showtimes (Yahoo! India Movies), as well as a MTV Asia mobile widget featuring news updates and music charts.
These announcements further demonstrate Yahoo!'s global momentum and unveil the next phase of the company's mobile strategy for the Asia Pacific region. Today's Yahoo! oneSearch partnerships announcement brings the total number of mobile search deals signed by Yahoo! worldwide in the last 18 months to over 60.
"Sixty signed Yahoo! oneSearch partner deals is a great milestone, putting us on our way to our goal of ultimately connecting the billions of mobile consumers around the globe with the best possible Internet experience," said Marco Boerries, executive vice president, Connected Life, Yahoo!. "Today's partnerships and product launches further Yahoo!'s global momentum and serve to reinforce our strong position in the mobile industry."
Coupons, Inc. Partners with Yahoo! for Mobile Savings
Coupons, Inc., the world’s leading provider of printable coupon marketing and technology solutions, and Yahoo!, the company that defined the markets for display and search advertising in both PC andmobile, have expanded their current relationship to enable consumers to discover and redeem coupons from their phones while on the go. Coupons, Inc. dominates the online coupon space, with more than 800 brand relationships, thousands of coupon campaigns and the world’s leading online coupon distribution network. The company will make its mobile platform immediately available to all the brands in its network.
Mobile coupons are considered a promising source of revenue for mobile publishers; they are one of the marketing tactics consumers say they would welcome as part of their mobile experience. Early tests have lacked the scale that national brand marketers who spend the most on coupon promotions expect. Coupons, Inc. brought exactly that sort of scale to the printable coupon market by building a network of publishers that reaches hundreds of millions of consumers each month, and intends to do the same for its clients’ mobile coupons with partners like Yahoo!.
“We see mobile coupons as a natural extension of our leading digital marketing platform and a way to turn coupons into a strategic marketing vehicle that delivers value,” said Steve Boom, Senior Vice President, Mobile, Yahoo!. “Our global reach, leading position in mobile advertising and the ability to deliver the right offer to people, coupled with Coupons, Inc.’s leadership in coupons, creates a unique opportunity to define and catalyze the market for mobile coupon promotions. When consumers get a coupon they want it’s not seen as an ad ‒ but a gift.”
Leading brands like Papa John’s Pizza are lining up to take advantage of the new platform and planning mobile coupon campaigns:
“Papa John’s is excited about mobile coupons and is looking forward to working with Yahoo! and Coupons, Inc. on this innovative mobile marketing opportunity,” said Jim Ensign, Vice President of Marketing Communications at Papa John’s. “We see mobile coupons as a viable wayof reaching our customers wherever they might be and another component of our integrated marketing campaigns.”
“Coupons, Inc. has been innovating coupon technology for a decade. Mobile coupons are a logical next step in the industry’s evolution, and we continue our commitment to drive interactive coupons with our new mobile initiative,” said Steven Boal, CEO of Coupons, Inc. “By partnering with Yahoo!, we will extend our customers’ reach to a new generation of consumers ‒ especially teens and young adults ‒ in a medium that best fits their lifestyles.”
Analysts agree. “Mobile coupons are a winning combination for consumers and marketers,” said Tim Bajarin, President of Creative Strategies. “Anything mobile that is easy to use and helps consumers save money will be warmly accepted. This partnership has the potential to finally push past some of the issues that have prevented mobile marketing from really taking off.” /PR/FierceWireless
Yahoo to Launch Voice-enabled oneSearch 2.0
Yahoo continued its aggressive mobile push as the web services giant announced the summer 2008 launch of oneSearch 2.0, an expansion of its mobile search service enabling users to initiate queries via text or voice. Marco Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoo's Connected Life division, announced the oneSearch upgrades during a keynote appearance Wednesday at CTIA Wireless 2008.
Boerries also said the company will open the search platform to publishers to stimulate content integration, simplify search input and make search instantly accessible on device idle screens. "We want to create indispensable mobile services for everyday people -- the kinds of services people use many times a day," Boerries said. "We believe the mobile opportunity is too big and too complex to do it alone."
According to Yahoo, improved content integration will yield oneSearch results based more on actual content, not just web links, and provide multi-dimension information -- for example, a search for "Italian restaurants" would include traditional results like addresses and phone numbers as well as user recommendations and available reservations.
While oneSearch 2.0's Search Assist feature promises faster and easier input, predictive text completion and contextual recommendations, Yahoo will also partner with speech-recognition developer Vlingo to enable voice search allowing for users to seek out any and all information without following prompts or adhering to specific search terms. While Yahoo will officially launch the oneSearch 2.0 service later this year, a technology preview is now available for download on BlackBerry devices.
In related news, Vlingo announced the completion of a $20 million Series B financing round led by Yahoo. According to Vlingo, proceeds from the funding round--which also included existing investors Charles River Ventures and Sigma Partners -- will be earmarked to fuel international expansion and continue its R&D efforts. [ABI Research]
Five Mobile Trends to Watch in 2008
Expect the unexpected...
By Natasha Lomas
How is 2008 shaping up in the mobile and wireless world and which mobile and wireless technologies are you going to be hearing more about in the next 12 months? silicon.com picks the five key areas to watch…
1. The big squeeze, operators cosying up and a push on data
Gartner research director, Sylvain Fabre, told silicon.com: "There's a serious pressure on margins for the operators and it keeps getting worse. Then there's other stuff like Vivian Reding limiting roaming charges… so the life of a mobile operator certainly is not going to be as rosy and cosy as it has been for many, many years."
2. Device convergence - the rise of the multimedia handset
Doubt not: the iPhone started it. "Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs last January as he unveiled the iPhone. The Mac maker made 2007 its mission to prove that three "revolutionary products" can come in one slick, touchscreen casing.
A year on from its launch announcement and the iPhone has itself been 'reinvented' by various mobile manufacturers. But as well as spawning plenty of would-be imitators, the device has galvanised interest in the mobile web - by making it an enjoyable, not just viable, experience.
3. Mobile 2.0 - user-generated content, social networking, location-based services…
And if the devices are getting smarter, what you do with them is going to be more interesting too. The iPhone aside, Juniper's Holden points to "that tipping point where we have a fairly significant adoption of 3G handsets" that will help drive richer, multimedia services.
He said: "Within 2008 I think you'll see a much greater adoption of video-based services within Western Europe and the US than we've previously witnessed. I think in certain countries that will be true of mobile broadcast TV services. I think in others it will be true of streamed services. And in most I think that'll be true of user-generated video content… What we'll see increasingly is that content uploaded into a mobile space so that other users can browse it."
4. Femtocells - a cost-cutting, data services driver - or not?
They may not mushroom forth in every home this year but expect femtocells - aka small cellular base stations installed in homes or offices, which hook up to a broadband connection to improve network coverage indoors - to pop up in various places this year as operators kick the tyres in trials of the tech and attempt to resolve some of the questions hanging over them. Not least the big one: what's the business case?
5. Disruption - not just the Google factor…
Expect the unexpected. Yahoo! is the latest contender to announce a fresh focus on the mobile world. And with the likes of Google already up and running with an offering in the space - its Android open mobile software platform - and also sniffing around US spectrum, the status quo is looking increasingly shifty.
"The operators have been watching Google very nervously because clearly they appreciate the enormous power this brand has," said Juniper's Holden.
Read more on this trends in detail - Silicon.com
Ponsel Baru LG Dilengkapi Fitur Google & Yahoo
Tak berapa lama lagi, para pengguna ponsel akan ditawari setidaknya 10 ponsel LG yang sudah diinstal peranti lunak dari Google. Nantinya, jutaan ponsel LG yang baru akan memiliki kemampuan untuk mengakses berbagai layanan Google, seperti Google Maps, Gmail Mobile dan Blogger Mobile, cukup dengan menekan sebuah ikon di menu aplikasi.
"Perangkat bergerak LG, dikombinasikan dengan Google, akan menyediakan bagi para konsumen akses yang mudah ke berbagai layanan Internet kesukaan mereka meskipun tanpa menggunakan komputer PC. Karenanya, hal itu juga akan semakin memudahkan mereka tetap terhubung meskipun sedang di luar kantor atau dalam perjalanan,” ujar Paul Bae, vice president, perencanaan produk LG Electronics Mobile Communications Co.
Perjanjian kerjasama antara LG dan Google ini telah ditandatangani oleh kedua belah pihak pada pameran 3GSM di Spanyol bulan lalu. Ponsel-ponsel pertama yang akan dikapalkan pada kuartal kedua tahun ini akan memasuki pasar Amerika Utara, Eropa dan Asia.
Selain dengan Google, LG juga bekerjasama dengan Yahoo. Nantinya ponsel-ponsel LG jenis tertentu akan mampu mengakses layanan Yahoo, termasuk Yahoo Go untuk Mobile 2.0, Yahoo Mail dan Yahoo Messenger. LG memang bukan perusahaan pertama yang bekerjasama dengan Google dan Yahoo.
Sebelumnya, Motorola Inc. juga telah menjalin kerjasama dengan kedua perusahaan konten dan penyedia layanan mesin pencari papan atas ini. Pesaing LG, Samsung Electronics Co. belum lama ini telah mengumumkan perjanjian yang sama dengan Google yang berbasis di Mountain View, California.
Menurut data IDC, tahun 2006 LG telah mengapalkan tak kurang dari 64,4 juta ponsel, atau naik 17,3 persen dibandingkan tahun 2005. Dengan jumlah pengapalan sebesar itu, menunjukkan bahwa LG menguasai sekitar 6,3 perrsen pangsa pasar ponsel dunia.
Yahoo Messenger Comes Calling
IM client gains a previously announced Internet phone capability.
Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Yahoo plans on Wednesday to activate Internet phone capabilities for Yahoo Messenger users in the U.S., a little more than three months after announcing this feature.
Since December, Yahoo has been doing a staggered rollout of the feature, which is now available for German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Singaporean users.
By enabling it in the Yahoo Messenger client software for the U.S., the capabilities become effectively available globally, said Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo's vice president of communications products.
With this move, Yahoo is trying to get a piece of the hot Internet phone market, which is led by Skype. Skype has captured a global audience of users with its intuitive, low-cost, high-quality service.
Making Calls
The upgrade to the instant messaging service, called Yahoo Messenger with Voice, lets users dial out from the IM interface to traditional or mobile phones. Yahoo Messenger users are also able to rent one or more phone numbers from Yahoo to receive phone calls through the IM interface.
Calls made to phone numbers in the U.S. and 30 other countries with heavy telecommunications traffic will cost 2 cents per minute or less. Calls can also be made to over 150 other countries. Rates vary and are based on the place where the call terminates.
For $2.99 per month or $29.90 per year, users are able to obtain one or more phone numbers to receive calls from regular or mobile phones via their Yahoo Messenger interface. Initially, only U.S., U.K., and French numbers are available.
Yahoo Messenger with Voice also features a free voice-mail service, and for the first time adds a banner ad in the IM interface that will be "unobtrusive," Garlinghouse said. It uses the Global IP Sound GIPS VoiceEngine technology to process audio.
Source: Yahoo Messenger Comes Calling
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