Internet giant Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) recently announced the launch of its new app for Google’s (GOOG) Android OS smartphones. It also launched another version of this app for Apple (AAPL) iPhones.
The new Android app will come with four new features; summarizer (to condense the whole news article into a few lines), personalization (to help users decide how much of a story to read), upgraded web, image and video search, as well as a “social” button (to let users share their content in Yahoo via e-mail, Facebook (FB), Twitter and other social sites automatically. Currently the new app is only available in the U.S.
The launch of the new app came after Yahoo acquired a string of start-up companies. It includes Astrid, a task-management app maker;Summly, a news-condenser app maker; Stamped, a mobile-review app maker; OnTheAir, which specializes in broadcasting video chats or interviews to online audiences; Snip.it, which is a kind of clipping service for the web; Propeld, a location-based apps maker and Jybe, a social recommendation site.
The acquisitions were a part of a strategy to broaden and strengthen Yahoo’s expertise in the Mobile segment as adoption of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets continues to accelerate.
Whether the launch of the new app can help Yahoo pick up some much-needed share in the mobile segment remains in question, but we need to bear in mind that serving news is one of its strong points and Yahoo Finance remains very popular. Therefore, this product could build upon its strength while helping it expand on the mobile platform.
In the first quarter of fiscal 2012, Yahoo generated revenues of $1.14 billion, which was down 15.3% sequentially and 6.6% year over year. TAC costs were down 42.3% sequentially and 49.9% from last year. Excluding these costs in all periods, net revenue was down 12.5% on a sequential basis and 0.8% from last year, short of the consensus estimate.
Yahoo has a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy).
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