Yahoo rolls out new mobile homepage to more Asian countries

Darius Chang | Jun 16, 2009

The revamped Yahoo Mobile homepage.
(Credit: Darius Chang/CNET Asia)

With mobile phones becoming as common as your everyday toothbrush, it is becoming evident that users are accessing the Internet via their handset rather than through the traditional PC. Yahoo is leveraging on this to increase its reach by giving its mobile homepage an upgrade. Not only that, today's announcement at CommunicAsia 2009 revealed that it will be extending a localized mobile homepage to more Asian cities.

Since April, Yahoo has rolled out its new interface to the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, India, Indonesia and the Philippines. Starting now, an additional nine countries have been included, comprising Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Spain and Italy.

Instead of a static site with access to only Yahoo services, the new interface is customizable and third-party sites such as Facebook, Wikipedia and Gmail can be added. An interesting addition is the Social Pulse tab which aggregates all the social-network sites that one belongs to for quick updates. The new homepage can be accessed through the handset's built-in Web browser, while iPhone users have an additional option via the App Store to install a free application that leads directly to Yahoo's interface.

By making its mobile homepage more user-friendly, the Web company hopes that Yahoo Mobile will be a hub for handset users to access their favorite sites and services.

Yahoo's update was made at the CommunicAsia 2009 tradeshow held at the Singapore Expo. The four-day event, which will showcase infocomm technology and new handsets from major vendors, ends Friday.

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