Yahoo 'scratches and flakes' on the cellphone arena

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang made his first keynote address since taking over this position last June, and his topic, nothing else, is "Promoting Web-based translation. Cellphone ".

Appearing on the CES 2008 stage, Yahoo's co-founder revealed a series of improvements to its Internet services in the near future, allowing them to run well on millions of current mobile phones.

Make differences

" Yahoo wants to play a bigger role in the mobile Internet market, but still maintains its roots as a pioneering Internet service provider ," Yang said.

However, the challenge for the company is not small. At the very least, Yahoo must point out the advantages of its services to rivals such as Google or Microsoft, especially when the company has regressed over the last few years in two "nail" areas. and Web advertising.

A series of missteps led CEO Terry Semel to resign and Jerry Yang to replace him. Accompanied by a series of reforms, major surgeries and global staff cuts.

Among Yahoo's new services, notably the new Yahoo.com homepage, began testing tonight. The new design has been optimized for mobile users, both in terms of content and interface.

" We hope the new homepage will be the starting point for every user's mobile Internet journey ," Yang said. Not only that, users are also updated with all the new information posted (of course in summary form) on thousands of websites like MySpace or YouTube, if desired.

Difficulties stacked

In addition, the company borrowed a number of popular features in virtual social networks such as MySpace or Facebook, encouraging users to share personal information with friends.

And to further enhance the attractiveness of its services, Yahoo also encourages outside developers to build applications - mini Web programs (called widgets) to run on mobile phones.

However, the opponents did not sit and play while Yahoo worked. Last June, Apple redefined the entire concept of Smartphone with the launch of the iPhone "phone", a hybrid device with a mobile phone, and easy to access the Internet.

Yahoo's unkind rival, Google, introduced an open-source mobile operating system called Android, allowing software vendors and outside services to "exploit" and exploit.

Confident or AQ?

Meanwhile, Microsoft hopes to sell 10 million smartphones for Windows Mobile operating system this year and set a target of at least 20 million phones next year.

Even so, Yahoo is still confident. " We have a completely different approach. We don't want to develop phones or operating systems. That's too much of a limit ," Yang said.

The idea is to exploit everything that involves two "mobile" words, provide both new services and improve old Internet services so they work well on the phone screen, rather than themselves. I designed my own "cricket" model.

" The question we ask is: how does Yahoo lead a mobile" ecosystem "for billions of users, not a few dozen million users (iPhone or Google phones?). Windows Mobile)? ".

Trong Cam