The mobile search market has been heating up recently. Yahoo, Google and Microsoft have all begun offering search services. With billions of mobile users around the world, these companies are hoping to reach new audiences. Each one is trying to get the largest slice of mobile advertising that is expected to reach $1.5 billion this year and double that by 2010.

In a bid to get the lead, Yahoo has launched a new Internet search system, OneSearch, for mobile phone users that delivers locally relevant answers. The service, which was initially launched in Yahoo! Go for Mobile 2.0, will be immediately available in as many as 85 per cent of the mobile phones currently available in the US market.

“We are now putting search on every mobile phone that has a browser,” said Marco Boerries, senior vice president of Yahoo’s Connected Life business unit. “We are delivering the results consumers want with just one search, not a list of web links.”

Yahoo claims that most Internet searches executed from mobile phones are looking for local area information. With this in mind, you can expect that oneSearch will provide and present search results with a bias towards information specific to the searcher’s location and area.

oneSearch is designed to make searching for and finding information as quick as possible for consumers by providing relevant results right on the page such as news headlines, images, business listings and more as well as easy navigation to other web sites.

Gartner analyst, Mike McGuire told Reuters, “This is not a knock on Google per se, but Yahoo has taken that a very specific starting point - your town or neighborhood. The content of many mobile phone searches is going to be very local. That starting point is key, like road traffic in my area.”

Earlier this year, Yahoo! has managed to form partnership with four of the world’s five top mobile phone manufacturers. LG, Motorola, Nokia and Samsung have all signed deals with Yahoo! to provide the Yahoo! Go software which includes oneSearch on their mobile phone platforms. In fact, their latest move saw Yahoo! team up with HTC and Windows Mobile just earlier this month. These deals provide Yahoo! with the potential to reach hundreds of millions of mobile phone users across the United States.

Yahoo! is playing the game well in the mobile search market. With their oneSearch technology and their partnership with the top mobile phone manufacturers, Yahoo! is sure to be a significant player in the mobile search market.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, March 22nd, 2007 at 12:12 am under Technology.  Print This Post

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