CES-Yahoo redesigns Web search for mobile phones

San Francisco, Jan 9: Yahoo Inc. unveiled a slew of deals with mobile phone handset makers and network operators to feature its Web search services on tens of millions of phones worldwide, the company said.

In a flurry of announcements with major electronics makers, officials of the Internet media company introduced software that mobile phone users can download themselves at a news conference at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Yahoo said it had developed oneSearch, a new mobile search service that give phone users instant answers. OneSearch redesigns search to offer potential answers as immediate search results instead of how computer-based Web search returns lists of search results.

Yahoo is seeking to outpace archrival Google Inc., which dominates the market for computer Web search, by being the fastest to win over consumers to its mobile phone Web search and related advertising system. Yahoo will offer mobile search software directly to phone users to download as well.

The company unveiled new or expanded partnerships with handset makers Motorola Inc., Nokia, Samsung Electronics Co., and Research In Motion Ltd. to include the new software on some of their phones.

A year ago at the same industry trade show, Yahoo unveiled relationships with Nokia and Motorola to pre-install Yahoo software on several million mobile handsets as part of its ''Go'' effort to expand beyond computer-based Web search onto other devices including mobile phones and television sets.

Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo said it was working with Sony Corp. to surf Web-based video programming with a remote control on Sony Bravia TV sets, which come ready to run Internet video.

Nokia agreed to a follow-on deal that will put Yahoo services on Nokia's ''Series 40'' line of mobile phones -- the most widely available line of Nokia phones in the world, extending a year-old deal on some advanced ''Series 60'' models.

Samsung, the world's No. 3 mobile phone maker, agreed to distribute and pre-load services on ''millions'' of mobile phones available in 60 countries of the world.

Research in Motion expanded an existing deal to encourage millions of Blackberry users to download Yahoo Go for Mobile 2.0 onto their e-mail machines. The agreement calls for tighter integration between Yahoo and Blackberries by mid-2007.

Yahoo extended a deal with 3 Group, a unit of Hong Kong's Hutchison Whampoa that operates advanced mobile networks in countries across Europe, in which Yahoo Go for Mobile and oneSearch will be offered to customers in Britain, Ireland, Sweden and Denmark. More markets will follow in coming months, the two companies said.

Yahoo said it had agreed to an exclusive partnership with Norway's Opera Software to make Yahoo the provider of Web search on millions of mobile phones in some 100 countries worldwide. While little known in the United States, Opera is popular among mobile enthusiasts internationally. The news sent Opera shares up 3.1 percent in Oslo market trading.

Shares of Yahoo inched up 18 cents to .92 on Nasdaq.

REUTERS