MWC: Yahoo! Announces oneConnect with Location Awareness
Tara Seals
02/12/2008
Yahoo! Inc. has a knack for picking its moment. Last year at 3GSM the search firm introduced Yahoo! oneSearch, an optimized search experience designed for the mobile device, which today claims 29 operator relationships and coverage of 600 million subscribers. On Tuesday, amid the furor surrounding Microsoft Corp.'s hostile takeover initiative, it once again took the press conference stage in Barcelona, speaking to a packed crowd to announce oneConnect, an open architecture for developers that aggregates basic mobile communications tools – e-mail, IM, text messaging and social networking.
The event didn’t live up to expectations for some in the room, judging by the ripple of disappointment that coursed through the crowd after it became apparent that Microsoft, Google Inc., funding, investors or any combination thereof would not be on the docket. But for those interested in mobility the announcement factors into an ongoing theme at Mobile World Congress – the idea of openness and customization, and of people taking charge of their own mobile destiny. Consider the show news so far: Microsoft´s Zumobi partnership, which is a widget application that allows users to place small tiles on the phone top that can be clicked to zoom in to full screen; Nokia´s reiteration of Ovi as the door to all mobile consumer services; legions of prototypes built on the Google Android platform; and so on.
As for openConnect, it will use widgets to provide users the capability to access e-mail from Yahoo! Mail, MSN Hotmail, Gmail and AO. It’s also in discussions with DataViz, a company that provides access to corporate Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Office, to work together on widget versions of the DataViz services, RoadSynch and Documents To Go. It also will have integrated SMS and access to popular social networking sites.
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