There is a major Internet brand in Silicon Valley that has hundreds of millions of users, significantly improving mobile apps, a position that places it between the Big 4 of Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon, and it may not be out of the realm of possibility that it could come out with a smartphone or OS or both sometime in the not-too-distant future.
Facebook? Sure, most likely – maybe even a sure bet. But, as Yoda would say, there is another…
Yep, Yahoo!
A year ago, suggesting this post would have been laughed right out of The Next Web back-channel, right? Well, funny thing is, 14 months ago in Japan, someone (Softbank) actually released a Yahoo! phone, with full-on Yahoo! branding and quick access to the portal’s many services, including mail, calendar, etc. Of course that was in Japan where Yahoo! is the #1 site in the land and it was released by Softbank, which is a major shareholder in Yahoo! Japan. Oh, and it was just a custom skin built on Android 2.3, on a more or less run-of-the-mill Android phone. But still, it shows that the idea is not completely insane (right?).
It’s pretty clear that new CEO Marissa Mayer is (rightly so) aiming at mobile for the company’s resurgence, and the recent successful revamp of Yahoo!’s Mail and Flickr apps are encouraging signs that the company is on the right track. Obviously, revamping apps is a far cry from a phone or mobile OS - Mayer has said that Yahoo! doesn’t need an OS to compete– but let’s just say for a few minutes that that Yahoo! will ramp up its mobile strategy to enter the handset market and think about what it might take…
Like Facebook, it is extremely doubtful that Yahoo! would build the hardware of any Yahoo! phone. While Microsoft has gone that route with the Surface, and Google is most likely on thecusp of a homegrown phone, both companies have more resources than Yahoo!. However, there is no reason that Yahoo! couldn’t find a strong hardware partner to work with.
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