CommunicAsia 08: Yahoo! Announces Mobile Initiatives For Asia Pacific .Also introduces localised versions of Yahoo! Go 3.0 for India, Australia and Southeast Asia.
Yahoo! has announced several new mobile initiatives for the Asia Pacific region, including five new Yahoo! oneSearch partnerships with leading mobile operators including MTNL (India), Hong Kong CSL Limited, Smart Communications Inc. (Philippines), Digital Mobile Phlis, Inc. (SUN Cellular, Philippines) and Vibo Telecom Inc. (Taiwan), as well as mobile advertising partnerships with Idea Cellular Ltd (India) and Maxis Communications Bhd (Malaysia). The two mobile operators plan to carry a variety of graphical advertisements, sold and served by Yahoo!.
Additionally, Yahoo! announced localised versions of Yahoo! Go 3.0 for India, Australia and Southeast Asia, including a local language version for Indonesia and an English version of Yahoo! oneSearch with voice that recognises regional accents. The company also announced the launch of new mobile widgets for the Asia Pacific region including Yahoo! Cricket, Yahoo! Answers and Showtimes (Yahoo! India Movies), as well as a MTV Asia mobile widget featuring news updates and music charts.Today's Yahoo! oneSearch partnerships announcement brings the total number of mobile search deals signed by Yahoo! worldwide in the last 18 months to over 60. "Sixty signed Yahoo! oneSearch partner deals is a great milestone, putting us on our way to our goal of ultimately connecting the billions of mobile consumers around the globe with the best possible Internet experience," said Marco Boerries, executive vice president, Connected Life, Yahoo!."Working closely with our partners, Yahoo! oneSearch is a starting point for mobile consumers across the Asia Pacific region, delivering locally relevant information on their mobile devices," said David Ko, managing director and vice president, Yahoo! Connected Life, Asia Pacific. "Our mobile strategy to lead and enable the mobile ecosystem is being implemented by focussing on developing mobile-first experiences, like Yahoo! oneSearch, and fostering high-quality partnerships to enhance the user's mobile Internet experience. This approach should benefit all parties, producing a higher level of profitability and deeper consumer engagement."Additionally, Yahoo! today launched Yahoo! oneSearch with voice for English speakers in Singapore and India. Yahoo! oneSearch with voice first launched in the US in April to make it easier to initiate mobile searches.Available beginning today for select BlackBerry devices including the 8800 series, Curve and Pearl, this English language product is capable of understanding, disambiguating and learning accents localised for India and Singapore. Whereas many other mobile voice recognition systems are specific to vertical categories such as local listings, Yahoo! oneSearch with voice lets consumers perform 'wide open' searches - returning relevant results for a range of queries. With usage, Yahoo! oneSearch with voice will adapt to the user's intonations and accent, providing fine-tuned results as the product is used. Over the coming months, the product is expected to support additional devices, languages and become available in additional countries.Consumers in Australia, India and Southeast Asia can download Yahoo! Go 3.0 on more than 270 mobile devices from major manufacturers worldwide and use it on most wireless networks.Yahoo! Mobile Widgets will be accessible through the new Yahoo! Go 3.0 and the Yahoo! mobile home page. Mobile widget developers can build their widgets in Blueprint, Yahoo!'s recently launched XML-based language that is said to provide a versatile and highly functional development environment. With the Blueprint SDK, you’ll get an easy-to-follow, step-by-step widget building process, allowing you to create, test and build more functionality into your widget. With Blueprint, you get your widget out to a broad market of potential customers. It runs seamlessly across platforms, supports multiple operating systems and hundreds of phones — giving your widget the exposure it deserves.
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