Microsoft’s proposal to buy Yahoo! today certainly raises questions about competition online, but also in mobile.
Mobile researcher David Chamberlain at In-Stat, who has followed the mobile market since 1993, says buying Yahoo! would be a good move for Microsoft in the mobile front. “But, I don’t know how Yahoo! plus Microsoft would be better than just Yahoo! when it comes to mobile” said Chamberlain.
Here is what Microsoft brings to the mobile table:
- A small portion of the mobile operating system market. The most recent breakout on the Windows Mobile system, according to Wikipedia’s entry on smartphones, which cites data from Canalys, shows that Windows Mobile had 6.1 percent of the smartin the second quarter of 2007.
And Yahoo! brings this to the mobile table:
- A suite of mobile services called Yahoo! Go. The service includes e-mail, instant messaging, mobile blogging, games, ringtones and photos (on camera phones). Earlier this week, Yahoo struck a deal with AT&T to put the Yahoo! platform on AT&T consumers on mobile devices and computers.
- A mobile search engine competing with Google. In March, Yahoo! opened up its mobile search to all web-enabled phones and put up this page that compares its mobile search to that of Google.
- Mobile advertising. Mobile researcher David Chamberlain at In-Stat says that Yahoo is well connected in mobile advertising - especially in Europe and Japan. Just two weeks ago, Yahoo struck a mobile ad deal with T-Mobile.
“I think Yahoo! is doing extremely well in the mobile field,” says Chamberlain who feels Yahoo! would help Microsoft in the mobile field, but added that mobile is “way way down the list of important attributes for what these companies would bring together.”
