TeliaSonera Ditches Microsoft, Chooses JumpTap as their New Mobile Search Provider

Up until now, TeliaSonera, the largest mobile network operator in Finland and Sweden, was using MotionBridge (acquired my Microsoft in 2006) for their on-portal search service. I’ve heard from an inside source that in the 2 weeks, TeliaSonera will relaunch a brand new search service on their WAP portal in Norway, Sweden and Denmark. TeliaSonera will stop working with Microsoft. Instead they have chosen JumpTap, a white label mobile search engine that has been growing during the last 2 years.

TeliaSonera’s mobile content providers will still be able to index their content with JumpTap, so that users can find them via search keywords, just like MotionBridge/Microsoft. What’s new is the paid search solution offer. Advertisers can now buy sponsored listings from JumpTap to appear in the search results, there will be two ads per page.

TeliaSonera’s WAP portal is also going to be revamped, and the focus will on mobile Internet thanks to a tool called SurfOpen, you can find more information about that on this press release.

This is yet another case where a mobile network company chooses to work with a white label search engine, rather than one of the big 3s. Let’s wait a few months or years to see if this choice proves to be the right one for users, advertisers, and mobile phone companies.

Confirmed: Microsoft Offers to Buy Yahoo! for $44.6 Billion

This day has come my friends. Microsoft just offered to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 Billion, or $31 a share. According to the press release:

Microsoft’s proposal would allow the Yahoo! shareholders to elect to receive cash or a fixed number of shares of Microsoft common stock, with the total consideration payable to Yahoo! shareholders consisting of one-half cash and one-half Microsoft common stock. The offer represents a 62 percent premium above the closing price of Yahoo! common stock on Jan. 31, 2008.

This could be huge and really shakes up the search industry. Go for it Yahoo! !!!

Yahoo and AT&T Sign Mobile Advertising Deal

Yahoo! announced today that it is partnering with AT&T to provide mobile ads to AT&T’s 70 million mobile customers. According to Reuters:

A Yahoo executive said in a phone interview the new deal brings its services to up to 70 million AT&T mobile customers. Yahoo will provide Web search on the customer portal for AT&T Mobility customers and deliver ads to AT&T customers who use the Internet on their mobile phones, he said.

“We are actually gaining more subscribers; we are going to gain more search traffic,” said Marco Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoo’s Connected Life division, who oversees the Internet media company’s broadband and mobile phone business.

AT&T’s Mobile Internet portal, MEdiaNet, is currently using Infospace/Motricity for on-portal search, and JumpTap for off-portal search. But it’s not clear if Yahoo! will replace them or just come on top of these existing search services.

Yahoo! proves again that they want to grab the biggest share of the mobile search advertising industry, and they are counting on strong partnerships such as the one with US’ biggest cell phone company to achieve their goal.

Google Mobile Search Update : Mobile Web Index Rescucitated

In march 2007, Google launched a new version of its mobile search engine, which quite looked like Yahoo OneSearch. The new version consisted of a page with just one search box, after entering a query, Google would automatically categorize search results in Web results, Local results, Images and News.

The only problem with this new version was that Google didn’t make a difference between full web pages and mobile pages. Pages from the Web and Mobile Web indices were mixed together, users couldn’t choose what kind of pages they wanted to have. For example, before that, if you couldn’t find pages that would display properly in the full Web index, you could use the Mobile Web index and find only pages adapted to your mobile.

At the time, I explained all the issues of the new Google Mobile in that post. Several people involved in mobile Web complained about the change. I even sent several emails to some people at Google in order to ask them to bring the Mobile Web index back. Well, it looks like Google heard us. The Mobile Web Index is back on Google Mobile Search engine.
If  you go to Google Mobile and search for something, you’ll now have 5 kinds of results: Web, Images, Local, Business, News, and Mobile Web.

I’m glad Google decided to rescucitate the Mobile Web, because even if transcoded pages are great when browsing with a handheld device, they cannot replace sites created specifically for the small screen.

Google Partners with NTT DoCoMo on Mobile Search

NTT DoCoMo, Japan’s biggest mobile carrier has announced that it has partnered with Google to provide their services on their Internet portal.

This is the second deal that Google signs with a Japanese carrier, the first one was with KDDI, Japan’s No. 2 mobile phone company , a couple of months ago.

DoCoMo and KDDI together control over 80 percent of Japan’s mobile market, so these deals will allow Google to gain lots of mobile search users.

Yahoo! is still Japan’s number 1 search engine, so Google can reverse the situation on the mobile search market.

KDDI and DoCoMo are both part of the Open Handset Alliance, the group behind Android, so that explains why they chose Google as their mobile search provider. The two companies will soon launch handsets running on this new mobile OS.

Source : Reuters.

Google Sees Surge Of Traffic From iPhones

According to the NYT, traffic to Google from iPhones surged during Christmas, and has even surpassed traffic from any other type of mobile device. People love the web experience provided by the iPhone so much that they surf more than traditional mobile phone’s owners, for whom it’s still not that easy to go online.

“The data is striking because the iPhone, an Apple product, accounts for just 2 percent of smartphones worldwide, according to IDC, a market research firm. Phones powered by Symbian make up 63 percent of the worldwide smartphone market, while those powered by Microsoft’s Windows Mobile have 11 percent and those running the BlackBerry system have 10 percent.”

Other handset manufacturers should replicate this kind of experience to increase the number of people using the web on the go, and to help the mobile web truly take off.

Japanese Mobile Operator NTT DoCoMo To Partner With Google

Japan’s biggest mobile phone operator, NTT DoCoMo will partner with Google to provide a search service and other applications from Google on its i-mode portal, according to Nikkei Business Daily, and reported by AFP.

NTT DoCoMo is said to have chosen to partner with Google because its customers are demanding more Internet functions on their cell phones.

Google is still far behind Yahoo in Japan’s search engine market. With this partnership with NTT DoCoMo, which has more than 50 million customers, Google will be able to gain some market share in the mobile search segment.

Yahoo! Signs Mobile Search Partnership With America Movil

Yahoo! announced today that it is partnering with America Movil, the largest mobile network operator in Latin America, to offer mobile web and mobile search services on its portals.

This is the largest mobile search partnership that Yahoo! has obtained since the launch of OneSearch, its new mobile search engine. With this deal, Yahoo! clearly proves itself as a strong player in the mobile search market. Google’s strategy is about focusing on its services and new mobile OS Android, but Yahoo! prefers to sign deals with large operators to gain market share in this area.

Yahoo’s OneSearch will be present on America Movil’s portals in 16 different countries across Latin America and the Caribbean, which represent more than 140 million wireless customers.

OneSearch will allow people to search for off-deck content and information, but also on-deck content such as ringtones, games, videos etc according to Greg Sterling who received this information from Yahoo!:

Yahoo will work with each AMX affiliate (regional carrier) to determine the advertising model that best supports their efforts. Yahoo will be integrating their “consumables” content (aka ringtones, wall papers etc), as well as tailoring the mobile search experience to best suit consumers in the individual countries.

That means that Yahoo will control all kind of searches made bu America Movil’s customers, and be able to monetize on-deck and off-deck searches with sponsored lists. This will be a real benefit for advertisers willing to reach more mobile users in these areas of the world (140 million potential customers!).