We had been witnessing massive advertisement campaign for the latest high-end mobiles from Nokia - the N series phones. One of the most eye-catching things in the ads were the Yahoo! ‘factor’ on the phones. The N series phones come with Yahoo! apps-ready. My experience surfing the Yahoo! portals through a Nokia N 91 was great. I was mightily impressed by it.

It wasn’t very surprising to read Reuters’ report that Japan’s most popular portal Yahoo! Japan is betting on cellular phone content like music and games rather than advertisement.

Masataka Matsumoto, Yahoo Japan’s mobile business head had to say this in an interview;

Since people carry around their cellphones all the time, we’re trying to take them away from going to game arcades or buying comic books at kiosks, and instead make them buy content on mobile phones.

No surprises there either that the new business model actually is totally different from Yahoo’s bread and butter PC-based service that gets most of its sales from ads. This is simply because in Asia, mobile towers over PCs when it comes to surfing aptitudes of the Asians and ads in a small screen do not make much sense. Yahoo! Japan, thus recognizing the potential there, is now working towards making it easier for users to browse along with sample songs and videos clips before purchasing.

In the next few years, mobile devices will be the platform of choice for most of the internet users. There is no way that this trend is going to stop or slow down. Yahoo! has shown very good business acumen there.