MyGlobe WAP gets more Yahoo! tools

A month after signing a strategic partnership agreement in Singapore to make available Yahoo!’s mobile search service to Globe Telecom’s 17 million subscribers, the two companies expanded their offerings this week by including the Yahoo! Go 2.0 suite of applications as well.

Aside from Yahoo! OneSearch application for doing Internet searches, Yahoo! Go 2.0 is now available for download free of charge from the myGlobe WAP site.

It includes Yahoo! Mail, calendar and address book and other mobile applications that online users traditionally access only from a PC. 

At the press conference to announce the service expansion, Globe president and CEO Gerardo  Ablaza Jr. said what they are doing with Yahoo! is nothing short of extending their companies’ leadership positions in mobile service innovations to the tens of millions of Globe and Yahoo customers in the country.

Yahoo! Go. 2.0 also offers personal customizable channels for news, finance, sports, entertainment, weather, and Flickr, a photo download and sharing service. 

Yahoo’s goal is to reach out to over 40 million mobile phone users in the country, half of which access Yahoo! applications from PCs.

No details were provided as to how Yahoo! will extend its mobile offerings to non-Globe customers. This, as “many elements in the partnership are exclusive to Globe,” said Minette Minerva, head of Globe’s Multimedia Business Group.

Meanwhile, Globe Telecom is making it attractive for its subscribers to try the new Yahoo! mobile services by offering browsing rates at 50 percent off up to Sept. 19.

“With Yahoo! OneSearch, Globe content also becomes searchable. So aside from the searches to be generated from the Internet, we can also give our customers local Globe content such as ringtones, wallpapers and other things,” Ablaza said.

Globe expects that easily 10 percent of users with GPRS handsets will immediately download the Yahoo! tools, while others may opt to text “YGO” to 2992 to get an SMS notification with the WAP link for the free client download over-the-air to their mobile phones. 

Minerva said accessing Yahoo! mobile applications from the myGlobe WAP site will prove to be cheaper and simpler compared to what one pays in an Internet café.  – Alma Buelva