Asia + mobile = Yahoo!

Greetings from Asia, where mobile phones are as ubiquitous as shoes. And where Yahoo! just got a tremendous leg up in the mobile Internet market.

I'm writing from CommunicAsia 2007 in Singapore, where I just finished a full-day of meetings with press, analysts, and partners from across Asia. We all spent the day fixated on the future of mobile search and agreed that that the next phase is dependent on a consumer-friendly, intuitive service designed specifically for the mobile device.

We've created such a service with Yahoo! oneSearch. And as of today, 100 million more mobile phone subscribers in Asia have access to this service through partnerships we've struck with six major operators. Searching and finding via mobile phone got infinitely easier for people in the Philippines, India, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Taiwan.

These carrier agreements make oneSearch the default mobile search service on our partner WAP sites and reinforce our leadership in markets where mobile phones are incredibly pervasive and where there's an increasing demand for mobile Internet services.

Since launching oneSearch at CES in January, we've worked hard to localize it for this important region. We know that PC search is not mobile search and PC browsing is not mobile browsing. People want faster results, easier navigation, and local relevance. OneSearch addresses that gap and now it does so in 14 countries around the world.

We'll also launch localized beta versions of Yahoo! Go 2.0 this Friday, bringing the cool mobile Internet app to 13 countries in Europe, Asia and the Americas.

This all gets us closer to our big audacious goal to eventually connect 1 billion mobile users worldwide. And think we'll reach it down the road with more news like this.

Dave Ko
VP & GM, Connected Life, Asia