Yahoo Inc. will be providing Nokia, the largest mobile provider, mail and messaging capabilities through Nokia Ovia and Nokia iChat. Nokia, on the other hand, will be empowering Yahoo with navigation, location, and mapping services. The services will be available second half of this year and gear up in 2011, reports the Associated Press.
Both have reached an agreement Monday to extend their services in the global market where advertising and Internet is becoming more accessible to users through mobile phones. However, the partnership covers both mobiles and computers.
“On the PC side, any of the mapping services by definition give us, especially in the local arena ,a good platform for advertising…and as mobile increasingly becomes important for advertising, the same thing will happen in the mobile application,” enthused Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz. Location, she added, is important since people want to know where they and their friends are. Yahoo has prioritized other areas that left it tailing behind Google.
As for Nokia, the partnership will provide increased mobile presence in the U.S. where it is being outsmarted by iPhone (Apple Inc.) and BlackBerry (Research In Motion Ltd.).
Reuters quoted Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo saying, “Location, maps and navigation will get more mind-share, will get more attention in the U.S. and many more users in the North American market.”
If the team up will work, Neil Mawston of Strategy Analytics sees it as an opportunity to bring about closer ties in mobile advertising for longer terms.
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