MediaTek and Yahoo! announced a global partnership that will embed Yahoo!’s services into MediaTek’s mobile platform solutions. As the world’s largest mobile chipset maker, MediaTek could dramatically increase Yahoo!’s presence in the mobile world. Last year, it [MediaTek] shipped over 500 million units for assembly into a wide range of mobile phones distributed worldwide.
Among the Yahoo! services that will find its way on MediaTek’s MAUI Runtime Environment (MRE), we find Yahoo! Messenger, News, Finance, Weather, Flickr, Answers and Mail.
MediaTek has been working closely with a number of 2nd-tier handset brands such as Cherry Mobile, Spice Group, Spice CSL and Nexian to develop products based on the MRE technology and is in ongoing discussions with other brands.
In addition to MRE, which is tailored toward feature phones, the two companies’ roadmap also covers smartphone implementations, Android platform included.
So what do we make of it? For one thing I’m certain it will help Yahoo! expand its reach, especially in the emerging markets. Whether that’s enough to compete with Google is a different story…