Yahoo’s been quietly putting into place a set of very high-quality tools and services for mobile phones. From the time it launched Yahoo! Go last year, the company’s been working feverishly at plugging its diverse services (mail, search, instant messaging, news, photos, finance, entertainment) into the mobile platform (or the other way round).
Well, you could say, so has Google. Not quite. Yahoo has understood (much better than Google) that the mobile usage paradigm is different from the PC. That is, users access information differently on mobile devices, even if it is the same information that they access from the PC. Nowhere is this more evident than its recently-launched oneSearch service. (Read this article on searchenginejournal.com for more.) In fact, Yahoo’s been bold enough to present a comparison of its mobile implementation of services with Google’s. And even with the liberal marketing hype, the difference does show through. Finally, Yahoo!’s managed to get Motorola and Cingular on board to advertise their phones’ compatibility with Yahoo! Go (Y! did say a couple of years ago that it was essentially a media company that also did technology!) In comparison, all Google’s done is slap a mobile interface to its mail, search and RSS reader services. That simply won’t work. Again, I recommend you read the article I’ve linked to above for understanding how Yahoo! views mobile search differently.
However, regardless of how Google responds and who wins the battle for mobile content in the US, the stakes are tiny when compared to those halfway around the world. India and China (am I tired of hearing that near-hypenation or what!) keep adding mobile connections at a pace that leaves the US and Europe flabbergasted. India is already the fastest-growing mobile market, and has the lowest mobile tariffs in the world. These two economies are where the real action is, where the real bucks are to be made.They are also by far the most challenging markets – diverse, fragmented, cost-concious, notoriously low-tech, unswayed by hype, and where organized business is almost nonexistent (in India, a mere 8% of the workforce is in the “organized sector”). A mobile user in Bareilly, Utttar Pradesh, for instance, wouldn’t bother about Yahoo! Go – or even Yahoo! mobile web, since he’s/she’s using a black-and-white, text-display-only, Rs. 1500 ($34) mobile phone that can do barely more than send/receive calls and messages and sound alarms. But the same user is passionate about being “connected”, carries the mobile phone everywhere and uses text messaging heavily. And there are more users like him/her in Indian and China than there are people in North America and the EU combined. How do you build winning propositions for them? Something more than ringtones and wallpapers, ideas so disgustingly obsolete now?
Yahoo! India and Google’s India operations need to get into the average Indian mobile user’s mind to glean what his/her purchase intentions currently are, how these goods and services are advertised to him/her today, and how a mobile phone (an always-on, truly personal device) could both change his/her needs, and serve his/her current needs better. Results are likely to be different across Tier 1 and Tier 2/3 cities. Serving the former will be easy – this market is very much like the tried-tested-trusted US market. The latter is where the real volumes are, the real revenue is, but it’s going to take some big risky initiatives to tap into.