In what could be viewed as an “enemy of my enemy”-style situation, a number of telecommunications companies are reportedly banding together to challenge Google and Yahoo in the field of mobile search.
At first glance, that idea seems unrealistic. Google and Yahoo have traditionally reigned supreme, and it would require a proverbial earthquake to knock them out of the lead. The telecoms may be able to create that quake, though; the list of would-be partners includes giants like Vodafone, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Telecom Italia, and Cingular.
As the majority of those groups are based in Europe, it seems fitting that a Brit, the Telegraph’s Juliette Garside, broke this story. Garside also discovered that those groups “have a combined customer base of 600m mobile phone users worldwide.” Impressive.
And if their size alone isn’t enough, the telecoms might put on a show of strength. Techdirt’s Carlo noted that, if they didn’t feel their search engine was getting enough love, “the operators have an easy solution to that: lock down the phones and make it the only search engine they [the users] can access.”
That possibility doesn’t seem too farfetched, considering that profit margins appear to be the motivating factor behind this development. “The mobile industry believes it can retain a greater share of advertising revenues by developing its own service,” according to Garside.
This whole thing may be nothing more than an extra-juicy rumor, but it sounds just strange enough to be true. Look for official confirmation within the next month or so, after the telecommunication companies “come together for secret, high-level talks at the mobile industry’s biggest annual trade show in Barcelona next week.”
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Doug is a staff writer for Murdok. Visit Murdok for the latest eBusiness news.
