Overnight, Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) signed several cell carrier deals in Asia that will put its mobile search onto a large number of new phones. According to the company, it now reaches 600 million handset customers worldwide.
Maybe mobile search will be a big market, but maybe it won't. Reuters writes that "the mobile advertising market is expected to rise to $16.2 billion in 2011 up from $1.5 billion in 2006."
Yahoo! may want to avoid counting its chickens too early. Despite the firm's upbeat tone, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) are having success getting into the same market. In China, where there are well over 300 million handsets in use, Baidu (NASDAQ: BIDU), the county's largest search company, does not want to give up market share to US-based companies.
If Yahoo! gets 20% of the market in 2011, it would pick up $3 billion in additional revenue. Is that a nice chunk of change? Yes, but that is a long time for Yahoo! shareholders to wait.
Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.
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