Yahoo! to tap India's data services mkt

MUMBAI: Yahoo! India plans to focus on the Wireless Data Services, which it expects to grow at around 100 percent in line with the mobile telephony sector in India. Data services market is hot in India and after telecom service providers, it's the turn of the portals to bank more on data services.

The company has started offering services to mobile customers, like PC2Mobile Services and GPRS downloadable products and according to the company sources it has been a great success. India has emerged as the second largest market for Yahoo as far as mobile services are concerned after China.



Yahoo India has also custom-designed SMS services for some of its clients, which have resulted in highly successful media campaigns.

The company attracts the largest traffic of netizens in India with close to 30 million registered users from India who use its communication platforms like Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Messenger and Yahoo Chat. Recently, Yahoo India has placed another mail farm, a collection of servers used to accumulate and distribute mails to recipients, and as connectivity and penetration of the internet increases, the company expects a tremendous growth in this segment.

Yahoo recently tied up with Spice Telecom in Punjab and Karnataka for mobile offerings that include Yahoo Messenger, group SMS, mail, logos, ring tones, cricket, astrology, photo SMS, jokes, blink and flash SMS, world timings and a host of other services. The company already had similar arrangements with other leading cellular operators in the country like Hutch, Airtel, RPG Cellular, Oasis and Escotel.

(CNS)