Yahoo! announced today that it would soon launch its new highly-personalized Yahoo! Mobile service. The fresh Yahoo! Mobile will be available on the mobile web, on the Apple iPhone as an application for the device, as well as an app for handsets from Nokia, RIM, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Motorola, not to mention smartphones running under the Windows Mobile platform. The service becomes available today through a managed beta program, and is expected to be generally available in the second quarter of the year.

Yahoo! Mobile comes with a rich design and interactivity, and can leverage the capabilities of today's handsets, while also offering an environment for consumers to put together their favorite content and services across the Internet. The new service includes Yahoo!’s award-winning mobile search, new map tools, and editor-selected content, along with access to email and social network accounts, instant messaging, address book and calendar tools, as well as news from websites, sports teams, news sources, RSS feeds, weather, stocks, horoscopes and more, all available into a single place.

“We believe the new Yahoo! Mobile will transform the way millions of mobile users around the world will interact with the Internet,” said Marco Boerries, executive vice president, Yahoo! Inc. “Yahoo! Mobile will enable users to create their own Internet starting point on their mobile device so they can better discover, connect to and stay informed about the people and things that are important to them.”

Among the key features of the Yahoo! Mobile for Web and iPhone, we can count Yahoo! OneSearch, Today, Yahoo! OneConnect (including Email, with access to Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail and AOL Mail included, Pulse, with access to Bebo, Dopplr, Facebook, Flickr, Friendster, Last.fm, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Address Book and Yahoo! Calendar), Yahoo! News and Yahoo! OnePlace. Besides the above functionality, Yahoo! Mobile for smartphones will also include Yahoo! oneSearch with Voice, Maps, Opera Mini 4.2 and Widgets.

Each version of Yahoo! Mobile is expected to be launched in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, India, Indonesia and the Philippines. Other countries will also receive the service during this year. At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, visitors can see Yahoo!’s latest mobile products. More information on the service can be found on the official website.

“Yahoo! Mobile represents significant and continued innovation by Yahoo! around creating a compelling and engaging user experience with mobile data services, and especially the mobile Internet,” notes Scott Ellison, VP Mobile and Wireless, IDC. “Rich and well-integrated offerings like Yahoo! Mobile, offered across a broad range of devices, will play central roles in the rapidly evolving mobile Internet space,” he added.