Yahoo Moves Deeper Into Mobile Ads, Search in Asia

Yahoo pushed to solidify its position in mobile advertising and search Tuesday with a series of new deals in eight Asian countries and territories.

The company's oneSearch will become the featured search technology on the mobile Internet search pages of service providers MTNL in India; CSL in Hong Kong; Smart and Sun Cellular in the Philippines; and Vibo in Taiwan.

Yahoo is also offering localized versions of its Go 3.0 voice search technology in India, Southeast Asia and Australia, with localization features including a Bahasa Indonesia version for that country, and one designed to recognize various regional English accents.

The company also signed two mobile advertising deals, with Maxis of Malaysia and Idea Cellular in India. Both will carry mobile display advertising, which will be sold and served by Yahoo. Financial terms of these and the other deals were not disclosed.

Asia is home to the world's largest number of mobile users with over 1.16 billion GSM (Global Standard for Mobile communications) connections alone, according to the GSM Association's report for the fourth quarter of 2007. China and India combine for almost 800 million, with Japan, Indonesia, and Pakistan adding about another 250 million.

The announcements came on the first day of CommunicAsia in Singapore, one of the region's most important telecommunications shows. CommunicAsia runs through Friday.