nancy_gohring
Writer

Yahoo shifts gears on mobile app

news
May 20, 20092 mins

Smartphone version of Yahoo Mobile is discontinued; Yahoo will continue to build and support individual apps for BlackBerry and other platforms

Smartphone browsers are good enough to deliver Yahoo Mobile, so the search provider has killed off an on-device software version of the product that it was beta testing.

Yahoo Mobile was introduced earlier this year and came in three versions: an application for the iPhone, a browser version, and an application that ran across hundreds of smartphones, said Adam Taggart, head of product marketing for Yahoo’s mobile group.

After running a beta test of the smartphone application, Yahoo has decided to discontinue the product.

“Instead of launching an all-in-one app for general smartphones, what we’ll do is continue focusing on the browser version and the iPhone app,” he said. “We found that most smartphones have great browsers these days, and so we’re finding that the experience we’re able to provide in the browser is similar to the experience in an app.”

Yahoo Mobile is a single page that connects users to services from Yahoo and others, such as e-mail, IM, Facebook, and search.

Rather than continue to develop and support the smartphone application, Yahoo will focus on building vertical applications for specific platforms, including BlackBerry and “most likely” Android, he said. “When you have finite resources, you want to say, ‘Where can I give the biggest bang for the buck?'” he said.

As an example, a smartphone user might connect to Yahoo Mobile through the browser, but download a specific application for following fantasy sports that offers more than a browser application would, he said.

Reports this week suggested that Yahoo was discontinuing its individual mobile applications for the BlackBerry, which include Yahoo Mail, IM, search, and Flickr. In fact, Yahoo plans to continue to support its BlackBerry applications, Taggart said.

nancy_gohring

Nancy Gohring is a freelance journalist who started writing about mobile phones just in time to cover the transition to digital. She's written about PCs from Hanover, cellular networks from Singapore, wireless standards from Cyprus, cloud computing from Seattle and just about any technology subject you can think of from Las Vegas. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Computerworld, Wired, the Seattle Times and other well-respected publications.

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