Yahoo! introduced their dedicated app for smartphones at Mobile World Congress a few months ago, but a recent e-mail update has announced that they’re pulling the plug on the project.
Yahoo! has decided to cease development of the Yahoo! Mobile smartphone app effective Wednesday, May 20th. So you will not be provided access to the beta program for this product.
For the time being, we will be focusing our efforts on the newly-launched Yahoo! Mobile experience for browsers (available at new.m.yahoo.com) and for the iPhone (available via the Apple App Store).
We really want to thank you for your interest in being a beta tester. The feedback we receive during these programs is extremely helpful in improving the customer experience across all of Yahoo!’s mobile products. In the meantime, stay tuned for more exciting new mobile product releases from Yahoo!. There’s a lot coming and we want to hear your feedback!
Many thanks,
The Yahoo! Mobile team
Nobody’s really weeping openly about the app getting canned – my initial reactions after seeing it was that the world already has enough widget platforms and most manufacturers are already working towards bridging the gap between platforms by using common languages (Palm’s WebOS is a prime example, and now RIM’s moving in the same direction), which is the fundamental problem a widget platform tries to solve. The renewed focus on iPhone is interesting, though. Yahoo! has just started dipping their toes in the iPhone pool with their Messenger app in April, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see them unload a variety of other Yahoo! services in an iPhone-friendly package. No doubt other OSes, like BlackBerry and Symbian will still get some love, but putting some man hours into a solid mobile browser experience is a worthwhile endeavor, too – then services are accessible by any internet-capable phone, and Yahoo! doesn’t have to worry about trying to convince people to download a separate app.