Yahoo partners with Reliance Comm for mobile search

Yahoo! has made its mobile Internet search service, oneSearch, available on Reliance Mobile World

Yahoo! India has extended its tie-up with Reliance Communications to make its mobile search service, oneSearch, available on Reliance mobile phones. Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger have been available on Reliance Mobile World, its mobile web portal, for the last two years.

Yahoo partners with Reliance Comm for mobile search

Vishal Maheshwari

According to Vishal Maheshwari, director, mobile, Yahoo! India, “The roll-out of oneSearch on Reliance Mobile will take place in phases. Initially, it will be available only to those users who have GPRS enabled mobile handsets. Later on, it can be extended to basic handset users as well, depending on the technical feasibility.”

“Search, along with Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! IM, on Reliance Mobile World brings us one step closer to the convergence of mobiles and PCs,” says Krishna Durbha, head, sales and marketing, applications, solutions and content group, Reliance Communications, in a statement.

The tie-up will enable Reliance Mobile users (both CDMA and GSM) to access news, financial information, weather conditions, flight status information, Flickr photos, Yahoo! Answers and Wikipedia and perform local search on Reliance Mobile World.

Around 10-15 million people access Reliance Mobile World out of a total 38 million Reliance mobile phone subscribers (CDMA and GSM).

Mobile phone subscribers who access Yahoo!’s oneSearch facility will be charged according to the amount of data transfer that takes place.

Yahoo!, which launched the Indian edition of oneSearch in May 2007, has already tied up with Idea Cellular, BPL Mobile and BSNL for the search service. The company uses both search and display advertising on the mobile portal.

Have news to share? Write to us atnewsteam@afaqs.com