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AUSTIN, Texas - Sunnyvale, California-based Internet company Yahoo has announced partnerships with nine  additional cell phone operators to provide mobile Web search services in the Asia-Pacific region, bringing the number of its global distribution partners to 20. The partnerships will allow Yahoo to provide its oneSearch service to an estimated 40 percent of the Asia-Pacific region's mobile phone subscribers. Twin Yahoo Announcements Yahoo's nine new oneSearch and mobile Web service partners include mobile networks in Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, India and Malaysia, and increase to 16 the number of its Internet search partnerships in the Asia-Pacific market. Combined with Yahoo's existing partnerships with seven mobile operators in the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan, it now has mobile distribution agreements with 20 companies in 19 countries. The financial terms of the partnerships were not disclosed. In June Yahoo announced partnerships with six Asian mobile service providers. A second announcement also came from Yahoo today that will see its oneSearch service released in Latin America in a preliminary beta test version. Mobile device owners in Mexico, Argentina and Brazil, Latin America's three largest markets, will have access to oneSearch in Spanish and Portuguese native language versions. Yahoo is also launching a mobile service called Yahoo Go that will serve Taiwan in traditional Chinese language. The announcements came at the GSMA Mobile Asia Congress industry trade show in Macau. Only the partnership in Taiwan will not require carriers to feature Yahoo's oneSearch, the company said. OneSearch Not Yet One Year Old in Asia-Pacific Region It has been less than a year since Yahoo launched its oneSearch mobile service, which allows cell phone users to access both traditional and mobile enhanced Web sites and to access information such as flight  schedules, local weather and attractions, and restaurant listings. Yahoo's oneSearch was built to display this type of information on the first screen users view, cutting down on the number of results pages a user must sort through. Yahoo is also offering e-mail, photo-sharing and mapping applications to its mobile customers. The partnerships announced today are expected to establish Yahoo as the leading mobile Web services provider in the Asia-Pacific region, and to position itself favorably in the overall competition for international mobile dominance against competitors. With the announcement last week by search leader Google of its Open Handset Alliance and mobile device platform Android, in moves expected to attract a large portion of mobile phone makers, Yahoo seems set on doing all it can to leverage as many mobile customers as it can worldwide. Yahoo and Google join Internet service providers and wireless carriers in looking to gain the biggest share possible of advertising sales expected to reach $12.8 billion by 2011, according to statistics by research firm Gartner Inc. Looking to Crack 50 Percent With 40 percent coverage in the Asia-Pacific market now clearly in sight, Yahoo hopes to increase its oneSearch reach to over half of all mobile subscribers in the region. "We have a clear goal to lead the market. The goal is to exceed 50 percent," said Marco Boerries, Yahoo's top mobile services executive, in a recent Reuters article. Boerries say that partnerships announced today will "give us roughly 40 percent coverage of all subscribers in those countries." One of the world's largest mobile markets is China, where Yahoo is working with Alibaba.com on additional partnerships with mobile carriers. The Nine Companies Among the companies partnering with Yahoo to allow its oneSearch service are the following announced today:  | Starhub Ltd., Singapore | | | Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL), India | | | Aircel Ltd., India | | | PCCW Mobile HK Ltd., Honk Kong | | | PT Excelcomindo Pratama Tbk, Malaysia | | | DiGi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd, Malaysia | | | PT Hutchinson CP Telecom, Indonesia | | | BPL Mobile Communication Ltd., India | | | PT Indosat, Indonesia | When added to Yahoo's existing Asian partnerships the nine agreements announced today  give Yahoo either preferred or exclusive status with the number two and number three mobile carriers in Hong Kong, the number one and number three carriers in Malaysia, four of the top eight carriers in India, and the top four carriers in Indonesia, the company said. In October Yahoo signed a long-term agreement with Madrid-based telecommunications group Telefonica S.A., affecting nearly 100 million mobile subscribers in several Latin American and European markets, including England and Ireland. Yahoo Mobile Search Additions Bring Asia-Pacific Coverage to 40 Percent The nine Asia-Pacific region partnerships announced today will see Yahoo sharing advertising revenue with each of the nine companies in a mobile market Steve Boom, the company's senior vice president of broadband access and bundled services, sees as an important one to reach. "Asia is a critical market," Boom said in a recent Wall Street Journal article, where "many customers may have no other means of accessing the Internet. The penetration of personal computers in Asia is still lower than those in the U.S. and Western Europe." Yahoo appears to be doing all it can to make its mobile Web services the most popular in the world, and as competition in the relatively new arena increases, the probability of its success looks promising. Related Links:
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11:07 pm on Nov. 13, 2007 (utc 0)