Yahoo Mobile Internet

Yahoo has announced the launch of Yahoo! Mobile, a mobile web destination as well as a mobile application designed to be the starting point of your online mobile experience.

It’ll be available for the iPhone, Windows Mobile-based handsets, as well as smartphones from Nokia, RIM, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola. It launches today as a beta, with the full version coming out somewhere in the second quarter of 2009. The (closed) beta is available at mobile.yahoo.com.

In practice, the application is an iPhone-style grid of applications such as Messenger, Mail, Maps, Browser, oneSearch and onePlace. However, it’s more than just a collection of links. As you can see in this (quite detailed) presentation, Yahoo integrates its services into existing iPhone features; for example, the standard iPhone stock market graphs will get a “Y!” icon; click on it and you will get additional information on how this particular company has been performing on the stock market.

At the center of this new offering is Yahoo oneConnect, a service that integrates email, access to various social networks, Yahoo Messenger, address book and calendar.

Yahoo is well aware of the fact that not everyone relies solely on their services, such as Flickr or Yahoo Mail for various online needs; therefore, Yahoo Mobile also supports other services such as Gmail, Windows Live, Hotmail, Twitter and YouTube.

Yahoo seems to have thought this through; they believe that their online services must become an integral part of your mobile life, and they’ve made it as easy as possible to get to them. They also seem to believe that all these services must be connected at one central place, or portal if you will. Strangely enough, Google has avoided such initiatives in the past, both on the web and on mobiles; we’ll see if Yahoo knows something they don’t.