Yahoo! going mobile

Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO) announced today that its Yahoo! Go for Mobile service is now available for download onto phones powered by Microsoft Corp.'s (Nasdaq:MSFT) Windows Mobile. The service includes Yahoo! Mail, Search, Photos, Address Book and Calendar, as well as Yahoo! News, Sports and Finance among others.

This integrated suite was launched earlier this year and is available on several phones through distribution deals Yahoo! had already signed with several manufacturers. According to the press release, the Yahoo! Go service "gives consumers quick access to their personalized Internet content on their mobile phone."

While the market is still in its infancy, I remembered reading earlier this month a report by Telephia claiming that the number of mobile subscribers accessing the Internet via their handsets, jumped to more than 34.6 million in June 2006. The top ten most popular US mobile sites are: Yahoo Mail, the Weather Channel, ESPN.com, Google Search, MSN Hotmail, MapQuest , AOL Mail, CNN, Yahoo! Weather and Yahoo! Search.

Two very positive things I see from this announcement:

• First, yes, the mobile Internet market is young, but judging from the way hubby won't leave his "crackberry" alone, or from the way I obsessively check my email on my phone, I'd say that the market is going only in one direction - up. (And trust me, I'm not an early adopter). Yahoo! entering the mobile market early (although not as early as some), can only prove to be a good thing.
• The second positive, which is more of a speculation/wishful thinking, is that perhaps this Microsoft/Yahoo distant collaboration could mean further partnerships between the two companies.