Yahoo And Windows 8 News :: Yahoo revamps email; pushes new iPhone, Android, Windows 8 apps

Yahoo Inc rolled out new versions of its popular Web email on Tuesday, the first major product makeover since Chief Executive Marissa Mayer took the helm of the struggling Internet company five months ago.
Yahoo released new versions of its Yahoo Mail product for smartphones and tablets in keeping with Mayer's focus on mobile devices and a revamped version of its Web-based mail product for PC users that cuts out ancillary features and that the company said delivers faster performance.
"You've told us loud and clear that you want fewer distractions when it comes to email. You want to quickly login, communicate, and get on with your day," Mayer said in a post on Yahoo's official blog on Tuesday.
Yahoo is the No. 1 Web email product in the United States and No. 3 worldwide, behind Google Inc's Gmail and Microsoft Corp's Hotmail, according to comScore.
But the number of unique users of Yahoo email declined 16 percent in November from a year earlier in the United States and 7 percent worldwide in October, according to comScore. Gmail's unique users increased 25 percent in the U.S. in November and 20 percent worldwide in October.
Analysts say Yahoo's email decline also owes partly to the broader trend of younger Internet users who prefer to communicate with text messages rather than email.
Mayer, 37, is moving to revitalize Yahoo's various Web products and reverse years of declining revenue. A former Google executive, Mayer is widely admired in Silicon Valley for her Web product savvy, though some analysts and investors have expressed caution, noting that Mayer has never before led an entire company as CEO.
She has said her top priority is to create a coherent mobile strategy for Yahoo and that she intends for at least half of the company's technical workforce to be working on mobile products.
As part of Tuesday's announcement, Yahoo unveiled an update to its mobile email app for smartphones based on the Android operating system, as well as Yahoo's first stand-alone app for Apple's iPhone.
Yahoo also released a version designed for tablets and PCs based on Microsoft's new Windows 8 operating system.
Vivek Sharma, General Manager of Yahoo Mail & Messenger, said the group of new mobile apps was part of Yahoo's goal of ensuring that its products are available across all major mobile platforms a move that he said should help Yahoo's email stay popular with the younger generation of users.
"Most of the new users, especially young ones, are using mobile Internet devices. So the first order of things is to make sure there are native experiences for them," said Sharma referring to mobile apps that are specially designed for smartphones.
Fewer ads
The new PC version of Yahoo Mail features fewer ads, primarily by doing away with pass-through Web pages that users previously encountered before they could access their inbox and which appeared after a user sent an email.
Eliminating those pages, and improvements to the way Yahoo displays its email Web pages, means that users can now reach their inboxes 40 percent faster, Sharma told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday.
Yahoo's email product is an important piece of Yahoo's overall online business, serving as a conduit to bring in users which Yahoo then tries to redirect to its other websites, such as news articles, stock quotes and videos.
By simplifying the product's look, Yahoo could increase the amount of time that users spend visiting its online properties, said RBC Capital Markets analyst Andre Sequin.
"A website can be incredibly useful, but if a user interface is annoying or has too many flashing ads, it can drive a person away," said Sequin.
He compared Yahoo's email revamp to one of the key accomplishments that Mayer is credited with at Google: the sparse homepage, which is free of ads and prominently features a search engine box surrounded by white space.
"Improve the experience on mail and there's a good chance you can get people to stay engaged with Yahoo properties for a long time," said Sequin.
Shares of Yahoo were up 11 cents to $19.54 in midday trading on Tuesday.
Yahoo's stock has risen 25 percent since Mayer became CEO in July, reaching its highest level since September 2008 when Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang was CEO.
The years between Yang and Mayer were tumultuous ones at Yahoo, as the Web pioneer cycled through four different chief executives and a variety of strategies.
Yahoo ranks among the world's most popular websites, with roughly 700 million monthly visitors. But revenue has eroded due to competition from Google and Facebook and changes in the online advertising market that have compressed prices for the online display ads that are key to Yahoo's business.
Many analysts and tech-industry observers say Yahoo's online products have failed to keep up with rivals when it comes to integrating innovative mobile and social media features.
© Thomson Reuters 2012

Facebook, Yahoo, Google most accessed sites by mobile Internet users: Airtel

Facebook, Google and Yahoo are the most accessed websites among mobile Internet users, who tend to consume maximum data between 10-11 PM, shows a survey by Bharti Airtel.
"Mobile Internet sees maximum data consumption between 10 pm - 11pm and Google is most visited website in terms of unique users, while Facebook clocks maximum time spent and leads all websites in terms of page views as well as data consumption," fourth edition of Airtel Mobitude 2012 survey said.

The annual survey of customer preferences is conducted to capture the 'mobile attitude' of over 186 million Airtel customers in the country.

According to the survey, wallpaper downloads witnessed a 300 percent jump and recorded 75 million downloads while music downloads number stood at over 150 million.

"Chikni Chameli from Agneepath was the most downloaded song of the year, its actress Katrina Kaif continued to maintain the leading position in the category of images downloaded for the 4th consecutive year," the survey said.

Among actors, Shah Rukh Khan led the category of Bollywood actors' wallpaper downloads, it added.

During the year, MMS crossed the one million mark on Diwali and jumped 145 percent on the festive day for the first time.

This year's analysis also highlighted a fast increasing customer preference for MobileTV, thus resulting in a 65 percent jump in traffic experienced by the service over last year.

"The data reveals an exciting picture of India's love for movies, music, gaming and social networking. The study also brings to light India's increasing dependence on smart devices and data usage as they access a whole host of new services on the go," Bharti Airtel Chief Marketing Officer Consumer Business N Rajaram said.

Apple iPhone 5 the most-searched gadget on Yahoo! in 2012

The U.S. presidential election became the most-searched item and Kim Kardashian was the most-searched person on Yahoo! in a year when online searches were dominated by big news stories and pop culture obsessions, the search engine company said on Monday.
The search term "election" topped the list of searches, led not only by extensive media coverage but also widening conversation on online social media platforms.

The term "political polls" was No. 8 of the top 10 Yahoo! searches of the year.

"The 2012 elections dominated the online searches, which is amazing because if something is in the news, it's already accessible people were really saturated by it, but even so, that was a key word that people typed throughout the year," Vera Chan, Yahoo!'s web trend analyst, said in a conference call.

Chan said only two other news stories have topped the list in the past decade, those being the death of Michael Jackson in 2009 and the BP oil spill in 2010.

"iPhone 5" came in at No. 2, which Chan said was interesting "in a post-Steve Jobs era" because while Apple Inc's iPhone has featured regularly in the top searches since the first generation emerged in 2007, this was the first time a specific model had appeared high on the list.

Reality star Kim Kardashian was the most-searched person on the website, coming in at No. 3 and leading six famous women in the top 10.

Chan said Kardashian's "notoriety has kept her at the top," citing her ongoing divorce saga with ex-husband Kris Humphries, her high-profile relationship with rapper Kanye West and her E! channel reality shows.

Sports Illustrated cover model Kate Upton, British royal Kate Middleton, late singer Whitney Houston, troubled former child star Lindsay Lohan and pop star and former "American Idol" judge Jennifer Lopez all featured in the top 10 after being in the news prominently throughout the year.

Middleton, who was followed eagerly by fans and critics in her first year as a royal married to Britain's Prince William and being a staple at the London Olympics and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, also garnered the most-searched scandal of the year when a French magazine published photos of her topless.

"olympics" came in at No. 7 on the list, as many turned to online media to watch and keep tabs on the global sporting event held in London during the summer.

On Yahoo!'s separate list of top-searched obsessions, pop culture dominated this year, with "The Hunger Games," reality star Honey Boo Boo, erotic novel "Fifty Shades of Grey," British boy band One Direction, Carly Rae Jepsen's hit song "Call Me Maybe" and Korean rapper Psy's "Gangnam Style" featuring in the top 10.

Yahoo! Inc compiles its annual search lists based on aggregated visitor activity on the network and billions of consumer searches.

© Thomson Reuters 2012

Yahoo ordered to pay $2.7 billion by Mexican court

Yahoo! said Friday it was ordered to pay $2.7 billion by a Mexican court in a lawsuit stemming from allegations of breach of contract and lost profits related to a yellow pages listing service.
The US Internet giant said in a statement it "believes the plaintiffs' claims are without merit and will vigorously pursue all appeals."

The California company's statement offered few details on the case.

It said the 49th Civil Court of the Federal District of Mexico City has "entered a non-final judgment of US $2.7 billion against Yahoo! Inc. and Yahoo de Mexico" in the case.

The lawsuit was brought by Worldwide Directories SA de CV and Ideas Interactivas, and "alleged claims of breach of contract, breach of promise, and lost profits arising from contracts related to a yellow pages listings service," Yahoo! said.

Yahoo! shares were down 1.4 percent in after-hours trade on the news.

Yahoo! in October reported that its quarterly profit rocketed above $3 billion, fueled by the sale of part of its stake in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba.

The California company's revenue from display advertising was little changed from the same quarter last year but Yahoo! reported its income from ads served up with online search results was up 11 percent.

It has been trying to reinvent itself as the search pioneer has been overtaken by Google.

Android 2.4 coming April, leaving 2.3 dead on arrival - not Ice Cream

Viewsonic has exclusively told Pocket-lint that its recently announced ViewPad 4 smartphone will be packing Android 2.4 when it launches in April. And the update will produce an OS that has the ability to work with Honeycomb apps.

The news, aside from confirming the new handset’s release date, confirms that Android’s 2.4 OS will be out earlier than we previously expected.

And there’s a reason for that.

According to our source, the release date of version 2.4 has been brought forward to ensure that dual-core apps designed for Honeycomb (v3.0) will be able to work with single-core devices running v2.4.

Currently, our man on the inside says that’s not possible with version 2.3 (Gingerbread) hence the need to push to the next iteration and version number, but not change the name. It's most likely to be one of the main reasons we’ve yet to see any major manufacturer gunning to get Android 2.3 handsets out there.

“It’s to ensure compatibility with dual-core apps,” our agent explains before adding that “it will still be called Gingerbread.”

Wait, what?

That’s right, in a move that shows there is some kind of cover-up of the mistake of the lack of Android 2.3 devices on the market (aside from the Nexus S) 2.4 will still be called Gingerbread, as the only new feature it adds will be this ability to support dual-core apps on a single-core device.

This chimes with sources talking to Phandroid on Friday that stated:

"We’ve just gotten word from a trusted source that Google has begun building a new branch of code - being called GRI17 (Gingerbread post-Honeycomb, aka “Ice Cream”) - that aims to bring some of the new elements found in Honeycomb over to phones."

However, we now understand that not to be Ice Cream. Our source at Viewsonic tells us that he believes Ice Cream to be 3.1, making us believe that Google intends to spilt the 2+ and 3+ OS variants going forward.

Certainly, Viewsonic is excited:

“This latest update to the ViewSonic Europe ViewPad range will position the device as one of the first multi-media handsets to be supported by Google’s new operating system,” our man exclusively told us.

Aside from Android 2.4, the ViewPad 4 will pack flash 10.1, have HD 720p video recording, playback, upload, and mini-HDMI 720p display output. There’s a 5-megapixel auto-focus camera, Bluetooth 2.1 and 802.11 b/g/n wireless connectivity. You’ll also get a 4.1-inch screen for your trouble.