Yahoo Boosts European Mobile Search Presence with T-Mobile Deal

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Yahoo's OneSearch will be the exclusive mobile search tool for T-Mobile's 11 European markets, starting the end of March. The companies are also working together on services such as mobile messaging, e-mail, and social networking.

The Yahoo and T-Mobile deal follows an announcement yesterday by Nokia that it will include Google in its search application. Google will sit alongside Yahoo and Microsoft Windows Live on four new handsets, which will extend to additional Nokia models in the future.

The deal, announced today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, follows a string of mobile search partnerships from Yahoo over the past year or so, and demonstrates its increasing focus on the mobile sector.

Speaking with ClickZ News, a Yahoo spokesperson described mobile search as a "key area in the future of Yahoo."

The company now has partnerships with more than 29 network operators spread across Europe, Asia, Latin America and North America. According to Yahoo these networks have a total of over 600 million mobile subscribers, placing it in a potentially strong position for garnering more traffic to its ad-supported mobile search results as users become increasingly familiar with accessing the Web on their mobile devices.

"When you compare the number of mobile phones in the world to the number of computers, it's clear that mobile search is becoming increasingly important," the spokesperson said. "By entering the market early, we hope to offer great services to mobile users."

The OneSearch product currently aggregates news, weather, financial data, photos and Web links based on search queries, but boasts more "streamlined" results than a PC-based search.

The two companies also plan to work together to bring additional Yahoo services including Yahoo's Flickr, Messenger, Mail, Weather and Finance to T-Mobile customers.