Yahoo announced at 2009 CTIA Wireless in Las Vegas that it was debuting Yahoo Mobile app for the Web in eight countries, and that users in the United States would have a new Yahoo Messenger app for the iPhone. Google, Microsoft and other companies have made the mobile space an extremely competitive one for Yahoo, which is hoping it can retain users via applications for sending and receiving instant messages, exchanging photos and adding contacts.Yahoo made a number of mobile-related announcements at the 2009 CTIA Wireless show in Las Vegas, including the
introduction of Yahoo Mobile application for Apple’s iPhone in eight countries and a preview of
the company’s second iPhone application for users in the United States.
Yahoo sees its
array of developing mobile
features as vital in its survival against Google, Microsoft and other IT
companies exploring the online space. An essential part of that strategy,
evidently, is gathering its various mobile assets together within a common
application.
Yahoo has been
working on extending
its various services onto mobile devices for years.
Yahoo Mobile for
the Web is now available on more than 300 handheld devices with HTML-enabled
browsers. The application, with the new Yahoo Mobile iPhone app, can be utilized
by users in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, India, Indonesia and
the Philippines; local versions of the program will be launched in coming
months, although the company declined to cite exact dates.
In addition to
featuring mobile search and access to online content, Yahoo Mobile for the Web
includes access to e-mail and social network accounts, instant messaging, address
book and calendar tools. It was originally announced at the Mobile World
Congress in February 2009 in Barcelona.
The application is available at this site.
Yahoo also
rolled out its Messenger application for the Apple iPhone, allowing users to
send and receive instant messages, exchange photos, add contacts, change their
status and stay logged on even when the device itself is in an idle state.
The Messenger
application is available for download from Apple’s App
Store.