3 Group, a leading 3G operator, and Yahoo! today announced a strategic alliance in which Yahoo! will provide its portfolio of rich mobile services to 3’s mobile networks around the world. The two companies will collaborate to offer popular Internet services such as Yahoo! Search, Yahoo! Mobile Web, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Mail, and Yahoo! Go for Mobile to 3’s users. The companies also plan to make additional Yahoo! services available to 3 subscribers in the future.
Key services that will be available to consumers on 3’s global network include:
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Yahoo! Search (Web and Image):
- Quickly access full Internet Search including the ability to find information about weather, stock quotes and dictionary definitions
- Search for and view billions of images
- Yahoo! Mail
- Yahoo! Messenger
- Yahoo! Address Book
- Yahoo! Calendar
- Yahoo! Photos
- News, sports scores, stock tickers, financial updates and more through a direct connection to Yahoo!’s Mobile Web
- Mobile games
- marketplace – the latest ring tones and graphics
Popular Communications Services
Leading Content
This relationship isn’t just about us buying more content to put on our portal, its about a deep engagement between our two companies to bring some of the world’s most popular Internet services and content to 3’s networks. Our customers and Yahoo! users in our territories will be excited to access familiar Yahoo! services on 3’s 3G mobile handsets and other broadband devices. Convergence between the Internet and mobile has been much talked about but this deal will really make it happen. We are delighted to partner with Yahoo! to leverage their knowledge of the Internet space, technical expertise and content and service portfolio for our customers. It is going to be fun.
said Christian Salbaing, Managing Director of Europe Telecommunications at 3 Group. From Yahoo! Europe, Geraldine Wilson, Vice President of Connected Life commented:
This announcement is another major milestone in Yahoo!’s strategy to extend our user experience ‘beyond the browser’ and across other platforms. 3 customers have already demonstrated their appetite for data services and will now be able to feed that appetite by accessing their favourite Yahoo! services via instantly familiar icons on 3 handsets. This arrangement gives us a new opportunity to take Yahoo! content and services to even more potential users – especially those that might not have ready or frequent access to the Internet via a PC.
The agreement helps 3 offer a range of important Internet-based services to its users worldwide, which should drive up customer acquisition, usage and traffic on 3’s mobile networks. On the other hand, Yahoo!, will be able to extend its mobile reach into the global 3G network world.
The services will first launch in the UK this summer, followed by 3 Group’s key European and Asia-Pacific markets including Italy, Ireland, Austria, Sweden, Denmark and Australia and on Hutchison Telecommunications International in Hong Kong and India. The offers will be jointly marketed on Yahoo! and 3 networks.
