From college going students to middle aged entrepreneurs?all have started demanding internet on their mobile phones and Yahoo! realises it. To catch up with the Web addicted user base in India, Yahoo! is now focusing on its mobile internet strategy by tying up with telcos, establishing local applications and indulging in advertising campaigns.
Though mobile internet has a low penetration, it is growing fast in India. By 2015, India will have 237 million internet users making it the second largest internet market after China, reveals a latest report by Boston Consulting Group.
Yahoo! is playing on many strategies to tap this niche market and it is early days in the initiatives. When it comes to partnership with telcos for search, Yahoo! Mobile covers over 90% of the India mobile subscriber base, notes Vishal Maheshwari, Yahoo!?s mobile Asia Pacific head. ?Mail and messenger are among the most popular categories on mobile. Even Yahoo! cricket on mobile is growing at a very fast rate,? he says.
Almost 95% of devices can access the Yahoo! Mobile app which is a downloadable application that enables easy one click discovery of all Yahoo! services.
It supports various platforms such as Blackberry, Java, Symbian, Mediatek, and Android. The company is trying to get a local flavour too. It has local mobile products and engineering teams which work closely with operator partners as well as Web products and engineering teams. These teams understand the local requirements and either customise the global products to a certain extent or develop the entire product for the Indian market. Yahoo! cricket on mobile is an example of a product that has been developed for Indian market in India by the company?s R&D centre.
Maheshwari says, ?We?re looking to provide consumers with easier ways to access Yahoo! content and services on the go. As we focus on simplifying and enhancing the Web experience for people throughout the world, we have developed mobile experiences like our new mobile homepage, which is available across more than 1,900 mobile phones.?
On the advertising campaigns, Maheshwari mentions, ?Yahoo! is placing a strategic bet on HTML5 platform to deliver the richest experience, and to build innovative, interactive advertising campaigns. Yahoo! is also focusing largely on scaled platforms (iOS and Android) for apps and will provide great experiences for emerging platforms (Windows Phone 7) that will gain momentum.? He explains that currently this niche segment suffers from a lot of myths and the picture is not all rosy.
Without any doubt, mobile phones have today have moved beyond their primary role of voice communications.
Automatically, this will further lead to search engines also coming up with customised solutions for internet users in the mobile space.