Yahoo Apps for iPhone Only – Mobile Browser Access for Other Smartphones

I was somewhat disappointed to read this TechCrunch subject line…

Yahoo Mobile Abandons Its Smartphone App To Focus On The iPhone

…until I read this quote from a Yahoo spokesperson in that article…

To streamline our services, we will not develop Yahoo! Mobile for smartphones to focus our efforts on mobilizing Yahoo!, improving Yahoo! Mobile for web and Yahoo! Mobile for iPhone…

To further claify:
- Yahoo will develop native apps only for the iPhone
- Yahoo will develop mobile friendly web pages for other smartphone platforms

In my opinion, this is a very good thing. If you’ve read my past commentaries about Yahoo mobile apps for the iPhone and Windows Mobile, you know I have not been very impressed by any of them. On the other hand, I think the Yahoo mobile web portal found at…

m.yahoo.com

…is excellent and has been great since the days of the Yahoo WAP formatted pages for any mobile phone with a WAP or conventional mobile web browser. It is fast, simple to navigate and easy to use. It also provides a diverse and rich content set. What’s there to complain about with that?

If anyone at Yahoo reads this blog, keep up the good work with your mobile web portal. And, for everyone else, it looks and works just fine on an iPhone (or iPod touch) too.

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