@CTIA IT: Yahoo!, Best Buy unveil mobile services to connect, simplify

SAN DIEGO—Yahoo! And Best Buy Mobile each introduced features that make it easier to access and manage relevant and personalized mobile content.
Delivering a keynote address Wednesday at the CTIA Wireless IT and Entertainment 2009 show, David Ko, senior VP of Yahoo! Mobile, showcased what Yahoo! Is calling the “world’s most advanced mobile home page.” Further, Ko said the company is going to spend $100 million on branding. The campaign will go through the end of 2010.
The mobile page works on 1,900 devices in 32 markets, up from 400 devices in 17 markets worldwide only four months ago. The company is also aiming to promote some smartphone applications across some popular Operating System platforms. To date, Yahoo! has launched Fantasy Football, Flicker and a financial application on the Apple Inc. iPhone OS and Research in Motion Ltd.’s BlackBerry OS.
The new mobile home page is designed to help users discover, connect and stay informed on the go. In the connect function, Yahoo mobile displays all the personal applications like e-mail and social networking apps and allows the user to customize them. A simple scrolling feature that seems to work fairly intuitively allows users to scroll wide through a number of stories or scroll deep into various sections.
The new mobile home page is designed to allow advertisers to market across platforms, Ko said. For example, Subway sponsors Fantasy Football on the PC and the iPhone Fantasy Football application.
Mobile browsers have become much more capable in recent years, said Adam Taggart, head of global marketing & Americas product development with Yahoo! Mobile. The company has seven applications for smartphones. Yahoo! Is playing at the intersection of “the world” and “your world,” with the new mobile home page, Taggart said, “And no one else plays there as well as us.”
Best Buy unveils mIQ
Best Buy Mobile used the show to introduce its mIQ mobile-Web connected cloud service. The free service allows smartphone users to manage their information and content from the phone on the Web, as well as back up that information in case the phone is damaged or lost.
“Smartphones allow our customers to do some pretty amazing things, but sometimes all the great features can be overwhelming, as a result, customers have a hard time getting the most out of their devices,” said Best Buy Mobile Director of Business Development Mark Mosiniak. “mIQ creates significant value for consumers by allowing them to easily manage their data, share their mobile experiences and get the most out of mobile technology.”
The service aggregates a lot of content, including e-mail, calendar functions, social-networking connections, photos, PIM, text messaging and the like. The company is rolling out the service on Monday as part of its Walk Out Working program, but noted it is also available to people who bought their smartphones previously at Best Buy or never even bought them Best Buy. Today the service supports BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60 operating systems.
“A lot of what Best Buy is trying to do is simplifying your life,” said Scott Moore, Best Buy Mobile’s VP of merchant, marketing and strategy. Offering things like mIQ, which in essence is a personal Web page, should help Best Buy win more customer loyalty as a challenger in the mobile devices sales space, he noted.