Yahoo! today announced nine new partnerships with mobile operators across Asia Pacific, Latin America as well as the availability of Yahoo! Go 2.0 in Chinese language for Taiwan.
Yahoo is offering consumers in Latin America's three largest markets a set of mobile Internet search services, paving the way for network carrier partners to offer Yahoo services of their own.
The company on Monday that consumers in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico can point their phone Web browsers to m.yahoo.com to download Yahoo's OneSearch mobile Internet software, which features local information in Spanish or Portuguese languages.
OneSearch offers Internet search on the first screen that users call up, in contrast to browsers designed for computer users that force phone users to navigate through several screens of links to locate the Web information they desire.
The Yahoo service, which will start out in public test mode in Latin America, was first introduced in the United States earlier this year. It makes mobile Web search faster and more relevant by providing links to local news, financial data, weather conditions, Flickr photos, and other Web sites.
Yahoo has also struck new deals to offer mobile phone Web services through nine network operators across Asia.
The Silicon Valley-based Internet company said on Tuesday that it was introducing a mobile service called Yahoo Go in traditional Chinese in Taiwan. These deals build on six earlier Asian carrier partnerships announced in June.
The Yahoo partnership deals include three Indian carriers: Aircel Ltd, BPL Mobile and BSNL; two Malaysian carriers: DiGi Telecommunications Sdn Bhd and PT Excelcomindo Pratama Tbk two Indonesian carriers: Hutch 3 and PT Indosat Tbk, along with PCCW Mobile HK Ltd of Hong Kong and Starhub Ltd of Singapore.
In recent weeks, Yahoo also has quietly begun offering Web search via SMS text messaging in Britain, France, Germany, India, Italy, Spain and the United States.
Yahoo is racing to attract subscribers to Internet services delivered via mobile phones rather than via computer browsers as rival Google has begun a longer-term push to offer software to create a new class of Internet-ready phones.