Yahoo relaunches mobile portal

Yahoo has stepped up its competition with Google for web advertising revenue with the launch of a new mobile portal.

The portal is now available both as a web-based service and an iPhone app in eight countries, including India, Indonesia and the Philippines, Yahoo said.

It can be accessed on more than 300 devices with HTML-enabled browser at http://new.m.yahoo.com.

The company has also announced a messenger app which will be available within Yahoo mobile, or for the iPhone as a standalone app - but the latter will initially only be for the US market.

The messenger service features the ability to send and receive instant messages and photos, change status and stay logged on to the service while using other iPhone applications.