Yahoo! with Microsoft: way ahead of Google & Android

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 07 February 2008 07:30

Opinion and Analysis

Google hopes its Android cellphone operating system will strengthen its position in the mobile Internet world, but Yahoo! combined with Windows mobile would present a formidable challenge. When Google announced the Open Handset Alliance and the Android cellphone platform I observed that, with half the world now owing a mobile phone Google would not maintain its momentum unless it could dominate that market the way it dominates the fixed Internet market.

And I suggested tha t, at the very least, the Open Handset Alliance would create a 'level playing field'  which would give Google a better chance to exploit its strength than one in which the software of arch rival Microsoft grows in presence and power or in which the world leading handset maker, Nokia, exerts greater influence by leveraging its dominance of handsets to move into the services market as it is clearly doing.

Microsoft - whose mobile operating system is second only in popularity to Symbian, tying up with Google rival Yahoo! - has the potential to change the picture dramatically. It comes just as Yahoo! has announced significant enhancements to its already well-developed mobile portal.

And if that were not bad news enough for Google there are now suggestions that Nokia, which primarily uses the dominant mobile operating system, Symbian, could embrace the Microsoft Windows Mobile operating system . There might well be good reasons for that. Research suggests that, in Australia at least Microsoft Windows gets used in anger much more than Symbian whose more advanced features, beyond basic phone functionality, are not exploited by the majority of users.

Windows Mobile runs on about nine percent of phones worldwide, RIM has a similar share and Symbian around 50 percent.