Yahoo! needs to understand the Mobile market in Europe if its to move forward

Implications: The Mobile Web is not about Web2.0 on your handset, if Yahoo! are to be successful they have to see that it is about more than just a smart UI.

Success will come from offering a service that makes them a destination site rather offer to manage Portal services fo the networks as they have done with the Fixed Networks.

Staffing and Politics are still an issue if Yahoo! are to be able to offer and execute a service that Mobile users will be happy with.

Analysis: With the appointment of Christian Lindholm Yahoo managed to appoint someone who understood that the Mobile Web was a difficult Ecosystem and that partnership was needed Yahoo! was to be successful. Lindholm was a Key Product Manager at Nokia and had developed a UI that people found easy to use.

At Yahoo! Lindolm quickly managed to turn around Yahoo!Go from its early solution into the Widgit driven offering that it has started to roll out now.  He also managed to forge relationships with European Operators that Yahoo! had failed to do before he joined.  However he also entered a political minefield that at the turn of the year saw him leave Yahoo! in frustration.

So now we see a business that needs a figurehead short of someone suitable.  It is now the end of Q1 and the best that Yahoo! can show in Europe is someone who is a former Strategy Executive at Orange who now works in the Corporate Development arm of the business when asked to put up a speaker!

Just what is the Mobile Internet? Yahoo! have discovered that it is about more than just a Search Engine for Mobile, what will also be needed is Conections not just data connections but something that allows a mobile user to discover who and what are close by and how they may wish to interact. It is about a better browser than you have on a Computer so what you see is a lot cleaner. Content wise it will need to have news, some entertainmet and be fun. It would also be good if it can have some advanced PIM functionality so that I can access the important stuff I have stored on a number of PCs.

The problem is that once you have built the ultimate destination site for mobile just how do you get the consumer to it?  Opera Mini has been the most successful application in terms of user downloads.  However it has had only 15M downloads since it went live to add to the 50M handsets on which it is installed as standard. With someone like Yahoo! trying to get traction on mobile data the Networks who invest Billions a year in Customer acquisition and retention will fight to stop becoming little more than a dumb pipe.

Yahoo! mobile is an improvement on the current UIs seen in mobile but we were starting from a very poor base.  The launch of the iPhone has seen a number of people up their game as they seek to gain share before Apple enters the market.  A couple of interesting spins outs from the Microsoft Lab for example show what might be coming. 

The big issue is that with pricing moving towards flat rate the promissed replacement of falling voice revenue with data revenue is not going to happen.  The Mobile Networks know that they are not able to sign exclusive deals with the content guys that produce significan value and so are opening up walled gardens.  However does more choice make for better choice or will the confusion just result in people giving up on Mobile Data as they have on MSM because it it too complex to be sucessful.