Yahoo! Europe and Telecom Italia Mobile (‘TIM’ – part of the Telecom Italia Group) today announced they have signed an agreement for Yahoo! Europe to provide TIM with a comprehensive range of Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) content and services.
TIM is the largest mobile telephone services operator in Europe by total client base. The agreement therefore represents one of the most significant relationships between a mobile network operator and an Internet company in Europe, to date.
Under the terms of the agreement, Yahoo! Europe will provide the TIM WAP Gateway with the following WML content and services. WML is a language that allows the text portions of web pages to be presented on cellular phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) via wireless access.
The Yahoo! services and content include:
Yahoo! Mobile Services: Mail, News, Finance, Sport and Weather
Yahoo! Mobile Messenger: A facility that allows users to send and receive instant messages via a telephone, PC, Mac or PDA to and from anyone online
My Yahoo! Link: Access to My Yahoo! content, configured on HTML base only
The Yahoo! content will be prominently displayed on the TIM WAP gateway and will complement the existing services available from TIM (TIM by Acotel) and the soon to arrive content from TIM’s recent agreement with SEAT.
Market research indicates that within the next five years up to 50% of Internet access will be from mobile devices, and that the number of these devices worldwide will exceed one billion. Italy currently has one of the highest mobile-phone penetration rates in Europe (approximately 50%). It is estimated that by 2004, 61% of the mobile phones in use in Italy will have the capacity to effect Internet connections (source: Forrester Research).
The agreement with TIM is a further development in the Yahoo! Everywhere initiative which delivers Yahoo! services formatted for both fixed and wireless connections via PCs, mobile telephones, personal digital devices and digital TVs connected to the Web. Yahoo! Europe continues to prioritise this strategy and has aggressively pursued distribution deals with both handset manufacturers and mobile network operators. Yahoo! Europe’s net revenues for the first quarter ended March 31, 2000 were $22,151,000 and Yahoo! Europe’s traffic grew to more than 940 million page views during the month of March 2000.
Fabiola Arredondo, Managing Director of Yahoo! Europe commented:
‘We are delighted to be working with TIM, Europe’s largest and fastest growing mobile network operator to deliver the Yahoo! portfolio of WAP-enabled services to Italian users. This agreement will increase our distribution of favourite and locally compelling Yahoo! products and services to the Italian market and is a continued positive step forward in the evolution of our Yahoo! Everywhere strategy across Europe.’
Marco De Benedetti, CEO of TIM, commented:
‘In line with our vision of a world of services independent from technology, we are proud to announce the agreement with Yahoo! Europe. The agreement will enrich and complement our extraordinary world of WAP. After the launch of i-TIM – interactive services – we are providing an enormous number of contents to distribute our services to customers in Italy and in the world. This is the framework for the agreement with Yahoo!.’
Frankfurt, 18th May 2000
Source: Telecom Italia Mobile
Click here for a direct link to TIM’s website