Yahoo Inc has said that six Asian mobile-phone operators, including LG Telecom Ltd and Malaysia's Maxis Communications Bhd, will use its search software as part of Yahoo's efforts to boost advertising sales.
Taiwan Mobile Co (
Yahoo, seeking to narrow the gap with Google Inc, targets companies that want to promote products and services to phone subscribers, tapping a market that's growing faster than personal computers. Mobile phones outsold PCs last year by more than four to one, researcher Gartner Inc said.
"Operators want to build services that increase data usage," David Ko, general manager of Yahoo's Connected Life Asia business, said in an interview in Singapore at the CommunicAsia telecommunications show.
Ko said that the agreement "gives us a potential reach of almost 100 million subscribers."
As part of the agreement, subscribers of the six operators' mobile Web portals will get access to OneSearch, which gives users information relevant to their queries rather than lists of Web sites, Yahoo said.
Yahoo had 3.9 million users for its mobile search engine in the US in February, behind Google's 5.3 million, according to research firm M:Metrics.
Google accounted for 48 percent of Internet searches in the US in March, which is more than the totals of Yahoo and Microsoft Corp combined.
OneSearch is part of the new version of Yahoo Go, which comes pre-installed on some handsets including those made by Nokia Oyj, Motorola Inc and Samsung Electronics Co, said Jason Coates, a Yahoo spokesman based in Singapore.
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