Yahoo to run on Windows Mobile phones

Eric Auchard

SAN FRANCISCO: Yahoo Inc. has added mobile phones running Microsoft's Windows Mobile software to a growing list of handsets from device makers who feature its services on their phone screens.

Marking progress in its drive to make Web services widely available not just only computers but phones, the Sunnyvale, California-based company said the Windows Mobile push will expand its base of mobile Internet users by millions.

Yahoo said on Tuesday it had agreed to partner with Taiwan's High Tech Computer Corp. (HTC), the world's leading maker of mobile phones running on Windows Mobile software, to place Yahoo on virtually all recent and new models HTC makes.

"Windows Mobile phone users tend to be consumers who are relatively data savvy," Ojas Rege, senior director of Yahoo's mobile phone business, said in an interview.

"They are a pretty attractive group of users both from the standpoint of being early adopters of new services and in terms of advertising demographics," Rege said.

Earlier this year, Yahoo said it had signed deals with four of the top five mobile handset makers in the world: Nokia, Motorola Inc., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.'s and LG Electronics Inc..

The deals allow Yahoo to give consumers one-click access to mobile phone services ranging from Web search, e-mail, maps and local information to Flickr photo-sharing, in a bid make the Web as easy to use on-the-go as it is sitting at a computer.

Measured in the number of high-profile deals, Yahoo appears to have gotten a temporary jump on rival Google Inc. in staking out a leading position on mobile phone devices.

In total, the company has agreement to run its Yahoo Go service on more than 175 different mobile phone models, including more than 100 models available today.

© Reuters