14 DAY TRIAL // It has been revealed that people applying for the Yahoo! smartphone beta app are now receiving a notice from the company, which says, “Yahoo has decided to cease development” of the app on May 20. According to Yahoo!, the focus is now on the newly launched Yahoo! Mobile experience for browsers and for the iPhone.
A TechCrunch report contains the text of the email sent to beta testers. The message reads:
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
The same report cites a Yahoo! spokesperson as telling that, “We are reprioritizing some products to help us better deliver the best possible experiences to consumers on mobile. To streamline our services, we will not develop Yahoo! Mobile for smartphones to focus our efforts on mobilizing Yahoo!, improving Yahoo! Mobile for web and Yahoo! Mobile for iPhone as well as developing new and engaging experiences for consumers, partners and advertisers.”
“We currently have mobile products that reach hundreds of different devices (including Blackberry), and we continue to expand that comprehensive list,” the spokesperson adds.
The author of the piece goes to outline that Adam Taggart, head of product marketing for Yahoo Mobile, revealed in a briefing last March that Yahoo! was embracing the distribution of content through apps, as well as through mobile browsers.
“We are embracing both, apps and browser,” Taggart stated, according to TechCrunch. “We as Yahoo are all about ubiquity. We have a renewed appreciation for the browser because they are getting materially better, but you can always do more with an app on your phone. In the immediate time frame you will see a lot more standalone vertical apps coming out of Yahoo.”
“The smartphone app is a way to turn your smartphone into an iPhone at no additional cost, if you are envying the iPhone,” he explained.