The first line of a fresh Yahoo press release describes the corporation as “a leading global Internet company,” and I have to wonder: isn’t that pretty old news? Yet, following a deal with six mobile operators throughout Asia, the phrase may bear repeating.
After all, those operators represent “a combined subscriber base of nearly 100 million,” according to Yahoo. And the American company won’t just hang out in the background, silently providing support; “these new partnerships focus on distribution of Yahoo!’s popular mobile search service, Yahoo! oneSearch, which launched in Asia in May of this year.”
That May release saw oneSearch go live in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Just two weeks earlier, it had been set loose in the UK, Canada, Germany, Italy, Spain, and France. With this latest deal, a pattern is emerging: when Yahoo oneSearch does something, it does something big.
The next countries to benefit from the service’s spread are Korea and Taiwan (along with, one might guess, at least four other nations), and the Associated Press reports, “[T]he company is in talks with operators in other regions for possible partnerships.”
“Partners are essential to our consumer-centric mobile strategy and key relationships will continue to evolve and deliver great Internet experiences to our respective customers,” explains David Ko, Yahoo’s vice president and general manager of Connected Life Asia, in a statement. Ko was referring to the new deal with six Asian operators, but his comments easily apply to oneSearch’s overall approach.
The financial details of the Asian arrangements remain unknown. Given the speed with which the service is moving, though, it’s a fair guess that Yahoo has made oneSearch a top fiscal priority.
