January 30, 2006

According to new numbers from M:Metrics, Yahoo has an early lead in the race to become the wireless Internet portal of choice for American consumers.

An average of nearly 13 million consumers per month accessed Yahoo's services from their handset during the fourth quarter of 2005, the firm said.

Second-place America Online Inc. lured nearly 9 million users per month, due largely to the company's strong instant messaging following. Microsoft Corp.'s MSN portal and Google Inc. each drew 7 million consumers.

Yahoo users were the most likely to use the portal for a variety of services including weather, news and maps. Google edged out Yahoo in the area of mobile search, while The Weather Channel was the most popular source for weather information.

ESPN was the most popular source for news, with Yahoo, CNN, Fox Sports and ABCNews.com rounding out the top five news providers.

The survey underscores Yahoo's success in securing premium deck placement with operators. Google, on the other hand, is working to entice mobile Web surfers off carrier decks with an array of offerings including a personalized home page.

AOL's impressive performance is perhaps the survey's most surprising finding, highlighting the increasingly important role of mobile instant messaging. Nearly 90 percent of those accessing AOL services use the company's instant messaging offering.

However, the survey also highlights the slow uptake of the wireless Web. Only 10 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used a phone's browser to access news and information in December, marking just a one-tenth-of-1-percent increase over November's figures.

"Although these are early days in mobile media, the aggressive efforts in mobile by Yahoo and AOL are paying off," said Mark Donovan, a senior analyst at M:Metrics. "But it is a close race, and as traditional media brands put more muscle into their mobile businesses, we expect that the market will shift."

Source: RCR