Wireless

Yahoo announced three new mobile applications Tuesday as the company continues to focus more on developing specific applications for the iPhone and other select smartphones like the BlackBerry.

The most widely publicized application to be announced Tuesday is Flickr for Mobile. This application is only available for Apple's iPhone and iPod Touch. It's free from the iTunes App Store. And it allows users to upload, share, and tag photos and videos. Flickr already has a browser-based mobile app at M.flickr.com.

The official Flickr app for iPhone and iPod Touch offers search, browse, and upload features.

Yahoo also created two new mobile applications for a few BlackBerry models.

Yahoo Finance for Mobile works on the iPhone and iPod Touch, as well as the BlackBerry Bold, Tour and 8900 series. This free application allows users to track companies, market indices, and news. It also lets users drill down into specific companies for more data. Yahoo already has a browser-based version of the application.

Yahoo also announced Yahoo Fantasy Football for Mobile. This application is available for the iPhone/iPod Touch and the BlackBerry Bold, Tour and 8900 series. Using this application, football fans can manage their teams from their phones, add and drop players, view match-ups and player stats, and get news and expert advice.

These new applications, which are specifically designed for the iPhone and a handful of BlackBerry devices, are part of the company's latest strategy to address the mobile market. Earlier this year, Yahoo shifted its mobile strategy to focus more on developing separate and distinct applications instead of creating services that fell into an all-encompassing Yahoo application.

"Before we had a one-size-fits-all approach to the application market," said Sandeep Gupta, senior director of mobile applications for Yahoo. "But the iPhone changed how consumers accessed applications. Now, they want to search for and download point applications. And we thought it was better for us to fit into this world."

Yahoo's primary goal with the strategy shift is to bring Yahoo's PC-based services to mobile phones. And in order to do this, Yahoo executives said they needed to develop and distribute applications like other developers, which meant adopting the iPhone model.

To execute this strategy, Yahoo is taking a two-pronged approach. It is offering browser-based applications for its more general properties, such as travel, personals, or some of its entertainment sites. But for more frequently visited sites, such as Flickr and Finance, Yahoo is creating native applications.

"Yahoo has a huge set of properties that we want to bring to all mobile users," Gupta said. "But we can't have customized application experiences for all of them. It's too much work. So we have created a broad experience for a whole host of sites. And we're creating a more customized app experience with a richer experience for certain vertical sites."

In February, the company announced the newly revamped Yahoo Mobile service, which combines all the organizational elements of Yahoo OneSearch, OnePlace, and OneConnect together in a single application. The redesigned service is a scrollable mashup of search, news, e-mail, social networking, finance, weather, sports scores, and other RSS feeds.

The company decided to offer the service to more than 400 mobile devices as a browser-based application. But it also built a version specifically for the iPhone. The app is free to download and is available on Apple's iTunes App Store.

Now, Yahoo has created three other native applications that have been customized for specific devices. Initially, these applications are only available on the iPhone and certain BlackBerry devices. The reason for this is simple. The iPhone and the BlackBerry currently have the most interactive mobile users, Gupta said. But he added that the company will eventually tailor these same applications for other smartphones, such as the Palm Pre and Google's Android phones.

"We're not waiting for these other devices to get popular," he said. "Work is going on. But it's a matter of priorities. There is a lot of investment needed to build these applications. And we have prioritized which devices have the most interactive users."

Bing may be catching on as a new search engine, but it has yet to generate growth in ad dollars for Microsoft, according to a report released Tuesday.

Microsoft's share of search engine ad spending for the second quarter stayed flat at less than 6 percent, according to the report by research firm SearchIgnite. That's the same level it's been for the past several years.

"Microsoft appears to be focusing its efforts on driving consumer interest and capturing increased search query share," said Roger Barnette, president of SearchIgnite. "We have not yet seen this translate into more paid search advertising dollars for Microsoft, although typically consumer adoption precedes advertiser adoption."

Meanwhile, Microsoft's one-time acquisition target Yahoo lost ground in the second quarter, with only 17 percent of the market. But top dog Google continued to rise, grabbing a 77 percent market share for search engine ad spending.

(Credit: SearchIgnite)

However, don't count out Bing just yet. The report noted that research groups have tracked Bing's share of the search query market growing since its launch last month. Ad spending typically lags behind search queries. If consumer interest continues, Bing could enjoy a boost in ad dollars for the third quarter.

Overall, the market for search engine ad spending flourished in the second quarter. The report noted that retail firms spent 36 percent more on paid search engines than in 2008's second quarter. Spending just for the month of June shot up 55 percent from June 2008.

(Credit: SearchIgnite)

"We've seen very strong paid search spend from retailers for the last several quarters," said Barnette, "a trend that can be attributed to an increase in retailers' promotional activity as they turn to heavy discounting and sales to drive purchases."

For this latest report, SearchIgnite tracked 500 marketers using Google, Yahoo, and MSN/Bing for the quarter ended June 30.

Now you can speak a search term as well as type it.

(Credit: Screenshot by Jessica Dolcourt/CNET)

On Tuesday, we reported that Yahoo pulled the plug on the Java version of its revamped mobile application, with the assurance that it would continue to develop for iPhone and other mobile platforms.

On Wednesday, Yahoo proved that with an update to its iPhone app. Yahoo Mobile 1.1 for iPhone and iPod Touch enables voice searches everywhere that the search bar is located in the app. You'll press the oneSearch field and see the large gray button prompting you to press and speak your inquiry. Unlike Google's voice app, which by all appearances had permission to break Apple's development rules, you cannot bring the phone to your ear to activate the voice prompt.

Voice transcription also plays a role within the "interests" tab on Yahoo Mobile, where you can utter a new topic after tapping "add anything." Like most voice input systems, this one--which is powered by Vlingo--isn't without its computational errors. "Kite surfing" became "Kate Hudson," but the app handled "cell phones" flawlessly. Clear speech is an important skill to have in voice search.

In addition to releasing this Yahoo Mobile update, Yahoo has expanded support for oneSearch with voice to the BlackBerry Bold, Storm, Flip, and Curve 8900. It also pushed out an auto-locate feature to the Yahoo oneSearch shortcut on some Window Mobile devices, and has made that application available to phone users in 21 countries outside the U.S., including India, Canada, the U.K., and the Philippines.

Yahoo's Java app plan.

(Credit: Yahoo Inc.)

Things were looking promising for Yahoo's mobile repositioning. By April 1, Yahoo had a redesigned mobile Web site, a richer but similarly-featured iPhone app, and plans for a Java phone edition, of which we got to take a sneak peek. However, that final Java app is no longer going to materialize, at least not in its originally planned form. Yahoo recently released a message to beta testers explaining that the company "has decided to cease development of the Yahoo Mobile smartphone app effective Wednesday, May 20th. So you will not be provided access to the beta program for this product."

At the time of writing, Yahoo's mobile Web site still advertised the smartphone app. Now, Yahoo wants beta testers of the native would-be Java app to use the revamped mobile site.

Yahoo cites streamlined services as the impetus for discontinuing development on the mobile app, but what does that really mean? Crushing business pressures that have slashed Yahoo's budget for mobile application development? An investment in developing for Palm's new Web OS instead? Or perhaps the realization that the planned Yahoo Mobile Java app needed a more compelling design than the widget dashboard motif under production? It could be all of the above.

Yahoo Mobile on the Web and iPhone groups Yahoo's search, RSS, and social-networking products together in a unified app, after each had been released as a separate element months before. It's a successful design, where the features are organized by screens in the iPhone app and by subsections on the scrolling Web app.

In contrast, the Java setup imagined the application as a gathering place for widgets: weather, e-mail, social networks, news feeds, and a browser shortcut. Were Yahoo to concentrate instead on recreating its iPhone offering for BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Nokia, and Web OS, the application would likely stick its cleats in deeper, and inspire greater applause than had Yahoo kept to its Java widget plan.

It is a loss for those in the beta testing community who had been looking forward to the Java app release, and it's not the first time that Yahoo has yanked a consumer product well after courting the press. (The visually engaging Yahoo Messenger for Vista is just one example, and one we'd like to see resurrected for the Windows 7 platform.) As Yahoo assures us its mobile team will continue developing for multiple mobile platforms, it's likely this won't be the last we hear of a native Yahoo Mobile application for a platform other than the iPhone--especially with platform-specific app stores on the rise.

[Via TechCrunch]

Careful, Yahoo Mobile for Web can grow longer than your arm.

(Credit: Yahoo)

Yahoo let loose at CTIA 2009 with a redesigned Yahoo Mobile experience for the Web and iPhone--available beginning Wednesday--and a sneak peek at a version for Java smartphones.

Yahoo has combined all the organizational elements it has been working on separately during the past year and a half or so to bring OneSearch, OnePlace, and OneConnect together in a single application. It's a throwback to Yahoo's beginnings as an Internet portal, but with a twist--and it works, though not without drawbacks.

Most intriguing is Yahoo's completely divergent similar experiences for the Web and iPhone versus the build for Java smartphones. The former invoke a classic Yahoo design, and the latter splinters off into widget land with a brand-new dashboard. Read below for the full details, or check out photos in our gallery: Yahoo Mobile steps into the light.

Yahoo Mobile's Web makeover
Yahoo's completely redesigned mobile hub on the Web is a tall, scrollable mashup of search, news, e-mail, social networking, finance, weather, sports scores, and any other RSS feed you'd want to add. At the very top is Yahoo OneSearch, which keys in your location using GPS or cell tower triangulation to make your text searches start faster. Below the search bar is a condensed feature section (Today on Yahoo) that emphasizes images.

Below that is an option to expand all Yahoo services, which gives you a portal-style list of everything from the Yahoo calendar to Flickr to movie showtimes. Back in the main screen, Yahoo OneConnect lets you add Yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail, and AOL e-mail in-boxes, Facebook and Twitter feeds, instant-messaging applications, and Yahoo's calendar and address book.

Further south, the area for Yahoo OnePlace will let you monitor RSS feeds for weather, finance, stocks, bookmarks, sports scores, and any other RSS link you'd like to add.

Now here's the bad part: Yahoo Mobile is infinitely customizable, which means that it's infinitely scrollable--the more services you add, the taller the app. While this is less of a problem on the iPhone, whose finger-flicking navigation rapidly scrolls up and down, it will take more time (and patience) on other devices. Although you can easily edit each section, the link to manage accounts from within each silo can easily get lost.

The ability to flip between screens for these various functions makes the iPhone app smoother and less cluttered, though the individual pages can still get long if you add numerous RSS feeds.

Trying to be too many things to too many people has been Yahoo's Achilles' heel for a long time, beginning with the Yahoo Go application that, though excellent and thorough, took too many brain cells for unfettered use.

The theme continued with Yahoo's series of separate apps for different mobile platforms that felt more like experiments than a mobile solution--Yahoo OneSearch with voice, OnePlace, and OneConnect. The retooled Yahoo Mobile unifies them all in a good-looking, intuitive structure whose whole is worth far more than the sum of its parts, even if it has the potential for creating a foot-long application.

Yahoo Mobile for Java phones
Yahoo's new native application for Java phones may be the same genus as the Web portal, but it's a completely different beast. Yahoo Mobile for smartphones has a few more enhancements, including voice search (powered by Vlingo) and an underlying Opera Mini browser. (See an image in our gallery.)

The app will take on a dashboard feel, with the search bar on top and widgets tiled below. The widgets will include services like Facebook and a socially intelligent address book that integrates e-mail history, SMS, IM, and calling.

There will also be a mapping app, and plenty of ways to personalize by adding your own widgets. It certainly looked easy to use when we played with in during our demo, but the one question in our minds is whether people will want a second dashboard on their phones to access their contacts, calendars, social networks, e-mail, and so on.

Answers to these questions will become clearer when Yahoo Mobile for Smartphones becomes available sometime in May.

Yahoo Mobile steps into the light--photos

Article edited at 2/10/09 at 8:00 PM to clarify the history of OneSearch for mobile.

(Credit: Yahoo Inc.)

Yahoo on Monday released an update to its voice-activated mobile search app, Yahoo OneSearch, that gets a handful of new capabilities for both its full-fledged app and OneSearch shortcut, plus new support for the Windows Mobile operating system. The OneSearch shortcut is a plug-in that lets you search by typing or speaking search terms into a search bar located on the home screen of your mobile phone.

After releasing a voice-enabled version of its OneSearch plug-in to a few Nokia phones last August, Yahoo has been slowly expanding the application's capabilities, as well as expanding the application itself, to the remaining mobile platforms. Considering the California company's latest string of woes, its slower rate of production compared to competing mobile search apps, namely Google, isn't too surprising.

What the OneSearch update offers is essentially good, but it isn't anything new to the field of voice search, either. Among the additions is a location feature that uses cell tower signal to mark your approximate whereabouts. After placing you, your search results will list local businesses by default. It's a necessary feature to win mindshare among mobile searchers, but Yahoo is playing catch-up among its peers. Microsoft integrated its version of location triangulation into Windows Live Search for mobile last month, and location awareness has been a big part of Google's mobile map client for well over a year.

Yahoo's OneSearch application and shortcut also receive some nice enhancements in the suggested search department. As you type a query, Yahoo's search app breaks its predictive offerings into two. The first block of suggestions is populated with a list of your previous search terms. The second block pulls in matches from an internal dictionary that include the first letters you've already typed. Although assisted search is by now a comfortably worn theme in browser and mobile search, it's welcome in Yahoo OneSearch as a timesaver all the same.

Yahoo's final feature is brand-new support for its voice search plug-in for Windows Mobile phones--but only in the U.S. Yahoo's OneSearch apps, however, have expanded onto some cell phone models in Australia, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.

Sprint Nextel on Monday announced plans to cut approximately 8,000 jobs through the first quarter, as the economic meltdown cuts into the telecommunications carrier's business.

In addition, Sprint plans to suspend its 401k match in 2009, as well as continue with its salary freeze for a second year. The telecommunications carrier's tuition reimbursement program will also be suspended this year.

The workforce reduction is expected to result in a $300 million charge in the first quarter for severance payouts, but also is anticipated to save the company $1.2 billion in annualized labor costs.

Sprint said the job cuts will also include 850 positions lost through its voluntary buyout plan that began late last year.

While the layoffs are expected to affect employees companywide, the degree of the cuts will vary based on geographic location, with the impact expected to be less severe in areas that deal directly with customers, Sprint stated.

The telecommunications carrier is the latest in a growing list of companies to announce layoffs> That group most recently has included software giant Microsoft with 5,000 cuts, Internet search pioneer Yahoo with roughly 1,500 jobs and social media site Digg, which is cutting a small handful of workers, or 10 percent of its 75-person workforce.

In addition to the layoffs, Sprint also announced it will report its fourth-quarter earnings results on Feb. 19.

Microsoft is preparing to announce Wednesday it has been selected as the search provider for Verizon mobile phones, beating out archrival Google and Yahoo, according to a Reuters report.

Yahoo shares spiked during mid-day trading as news surfaced that Verizon had chosen a mobile search provider, but then fell back to earth after the Microsoft disclosure.

There has been much speculation over the past year about who would sign the coveted search deal with Verizon, which is expected to overtake AT&T as the No. 1 U.S. carrier after Verizon closes on its purchase of Alltel, Reuters said. Increasingly, consumers and businesses are turning to their mobile phones as a means to interact with the Internet and advertisers are well aware of the trend.

Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg, revealed the carrier's search choice during a presentation at an investment conference, noting Microsoft's CEO Steve Ballmer is expected to make a similar announcement at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Although Seidenberg did not delve into further details about the deal, it is expected to generate between $550 million to $650 million in guaranteed revenue a year.

For Yahoo and Google, the announcement is a blow to their mobile efforts.

Yahoo in November announced a deal with T-Mobile USA to power its search and mobile Web portal. And although Yahoo recently was able to extend its relationship with Verizon to provide its Web portal to computer users, it fell short in doing the same for Verizon's mobile customers.

T-Mobile USA, which is currently rolling out its 3G wireless network across the country, is turning to Yahoo to power its search and mobile Web portal in an effort to boost data usage.

On Thursday T-Mobile said it would use Yahoo's OneSearch as the default search tool on its phones. T-Mobile is rebranding its mobile Web service and calling it Web2go. This service is supposed to provide a better Web browsing experience and easier navigation through a home page on T-Mobile's mobile phones. And it integrates Yahoo's OneSearch tool into it.

Also as part of the deal, Yahoo will offer sponsored search results and in some cases display advertising within the search results presented through T-Mobile's Web2go service. The companies will share the advertising revenue, but further details weren't given.

With close to 3 billion mobile phone users around the world, every major search company is vying for a piece of the action. They're also competing for a piece of the emerging mobile advertising market, which is still in its infancy. As a result, the stakes for the three main search giants--Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo--have never been higher.

Google dominates the search and advertising markets on the traditional Web. And it's already getting a strong foothold in the mobile market. In fact, it also has an important relationship with T-Mobile. Just two months ago, T-Mobile became the first wireless carrier to offer a phone using Google's Android operating system. As part of the deal, the G1, made by phone manufacturer HTC, has several Google applications, such as Gmail, Google search and Google Maps integrated into the device.

Microsoft is also making headway in this market and is believed to be close to signing a deal with Verizon Wireless worth about $550 million to $650 million in guaranteed revenue a year.

Yahoo has worked hard over the past couple of years to make its mark on mobile. The company already has deals with T-Mobile in Europe to power its search in North and Central Europe. O2 in the U.K. is also partnering with Yahoo. In total, Yahoo claims to have about 25 percent market share in Europe and more than 30 percent in the U.K.

Yahoo's OneSearch service is the core of its mobile strategy, and it provides search results that are supposed to be the most useful for someone who is surfing the Web from a mobile phone. Yahoo also provides voice search, allowing users to speak the term they are searching for into their phones instead of typing it into the keypad. Google just announced its voice search for the iPhone this week.

While deals with specific carriers are important today, it's unclear how important they will be in the future. Yahoo's OneSearch can be downloaded from the Web and any mobile user with a browser can search using Google whether it's preloaded on the phone or not. That said, for now, most mobile subscribers using a basic cell phone don't download new applications. And most don't venture beyond the carrier "deck" or menu of choices that it is given to them on their phones.

But that could soon change. As smartphones like Apple's iPhone, all the BlackBerry devices, and new Android phones become increasingly popular among consumers, users are more likely to venture beyond the applications and services preloaded on their phones. Apple has already seen great success with its App Store. More than 3,000 applications are currently available through the App Store, and Apple has said that users downloaded more than 100 million applications between the site's launch on July 11 and the beginning of September.

Research In Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry, and Google are launching application store fronts that will allow subscribers to easily access applications from third party developers.

What this likely means for the mobile market is that mobile users are being conditioned to explore and download content that is not spoon-fed to them by their service provider. And as users get more comfortable exploring the mobile Web on their own, deals such as the one between Yahoo and T-Mobile may become less relevant.

Think of the portal wars of the late 1990s. AOL dominated as a portal provider, but once users realized they could find whatever they wanted or needed on their own, Google emerged as a top destination site providing search, aggregated news, and now a whole slew of new applications.

Still, for the moment, there are millions of basic cell phones on the market. And if carriers want to boost data usage on these devices, they will need a little help from the Microsofts, Yahoos, and Googles of the world.