Yahoo extends mobile homepage reach

SAN DIEGO--Yahoo Mobile Senior Vice President David Ko touted the Web services giant's mobile homepage during his keynote appearance here at the CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment 2009 event, announcing the homepage now reaches across more than 1,900 different mobile devices in 32 markets worldwide-- a fivefold increase from its April 2009 debut. Ko added that between August 2007 and August 2009, Yahoo's mobile homepage traffic increased more than three times globally.

"In any given month a user checks his Yahoo email on both the PC and mobile, they will spend 82 percent more time with us than consumers who just check on the PC," Ko said. "Mobile is not cannibalizing the PC audience--it's complementing it."

According to Ko, Yahoo is focused on forging partnerships with various players across the mobile ecosystem--the company now has more than 100 operator and OEM partnerships globally, tied to a suite of Yahoo-branded services including mobile search, mail/IM and photo sharing. In particular, Yahoo is emphasizing the Asia Pacific market: In Indonesia, it sees twice the number of mobile searches as PC queries, and in India it's launching localized content and services like cricket applications.  

Yahoo also announced an improved mobile homepage experience for smartphone users, promising dynamically updated content with pagination, an enhanced RSS reader, expanded mobile video integration and movie query results that now include trailers, reviews and ticket purchasing options.