Champions of a more open Internet could take a small bit of cheer from Yahoo’s plans, unveiled today, to open up its mobile platform to third-party developers. But the lack of a service-provider partner to endorse the idea is one clear sign that chief Yahoo Jerry Yang and all the other exclamation-pointers have a long way to go before they can expect to have a major impact on the growing market of the mobile web.
To be sure, plans like Yahoo’s Go or Google’s Android, which aim to bring the power of the open Internet to your handheld device, seem a preferable future than locked-in services like Verizon’s VCast. But without a service-provider partner to watch its back, Yahoo (YHOO) seems unable to answer a big looming question for open-Internet apps accessed via a cellular phone: How fast will the app perform, and how much will it cost to download the data?
Here at CES this year, there’s evidence of a trend toward more single-purpose devices or agreements (like Sony’s Skype/PSP deal, which has BT as the phone power behind it) that are complete with the service necessary to deliver the goods.
On the video side, LG has an interesting plan to give existing broadcasters a mobile outlet, just another one of the competing methods arising to bring TV to places you never thought possible. But like Yahoo’s ideas, such plans don’t mean a whole lot unless the service providers play along.
Since we weren’t able to view the Yang speech live here at CES (long bus lines and the absence of transporter technology kept us from getting from the Sands to the LVCC in time), we weren’t able to question Yahoo folks afterwards about service-provider buy-in for Go 3.0. But there’s plenty of time ahead for answers.
Paul Kapustka, former managing editor for GigaOM, now has his own blog at Sidecut Reports.
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12:01 AM PT
[...] has a staggering 500 million users. However, it does a rather poor job of monetization. The vision that Yang shared at CES last week (“At Yahoo we want to be the most essential starting point for your life”) can come [...]
12:21 AM PT
[...] has a staggering 500 million users. However, it does a rather poor job of monetization. The vision that Yang shared at CES last week (“At Yahoo we want to be the most essential starting point for your life”) can come [...]
2 comments so far
11:24 PM PT
(link) is another good mobile website. It provides searching, saving and realtime transcoding 3GP video services for mobile phones. It also optimizes Web pages for mobile phones, providing a richer browsing experience.
It is the first in the world to launch the 3gp realtime transcoding service for internet video websites, such as youtube.com. It is different with yahoo! in that it provides realtime transcoding for both video and web pages.
11:16 AM PT
Yahoo’s Go platform is definitely less technically impressive than Android. But it may be a smarter move because it allows a larger ecosystem of developers to iterate through ideas quickly, on a large number of devices, and starting immediately. Yahoo is giving them a standard platform, some promotion through the “go” site, and even ad serving abilities. Now you tweak ad model and features in a nice sandbox.
Although there is no carrier partner now, the widget model is ultimately more carrier friendly (i.e. less threatening). Google’s approach requires carriers to take an all-or-nothing plunge into a new mobile OS, where they will have no control over user experience at all, i.e. become dumb pipes. Maybe being a dumb pipe pays off bigger anyway (ask AT&T or Orange when the dust settles on iPhone’s first year) but it’s going to be very hard convincing a carrier to make that bet.
A couple more thoughts here: (link)