Yahoo team up with Nokia for Yahoo Mobile Phone
Continuing with announcements from search engine companies, rumours abound that Nokia and Yahoo are teaming up to develop a Yahoo-branded mobile phone. Currently pitched at the American market through Cingular, the phone will be nothing radical, offering a 1.3 megapixel camera, MP3 player and removable storage, which suggests it’s a Series 60 smartphone, and will likely retail for $200 - $300. However, its purpose, according to the Wall Street Journal, is to “link wirelessly such cellphone services as music, photos and email with consumers’ existing Yahoo accounts, address books and preferences.”
This is something mobile phones could certainly do with. For too long, the major network operators have hidden behind their walled gardens, preventing the mobile phones form integrating with other information systems, such as the web, effectively. However, I’m not sure we need Yahoo-branded phone for this - why can’t Yahoo just launch their mobile service and let anyone use it whatever they phone they use? Hopefully they will, and the Yahoo phone will be used just for greater brand recognition. The Wall Street Journal writes quotes a Yahoo spokesman, who said “this idea of taking essential Yahoo services that we offer on PCs today and extending them to other devices including mobile phones is a huge priority for the company”, so hopefully we can see new Yahoo mobile phone services soon regardless of what mobile phone we use.
