Yahoo Re-enters the Mobile Market

Yahoo! Games has announced a number of strategic moves to bolster its mobile games capabilities, including the creation of the Yahoo! Games Studio and the acquisition of Stadeon, which helps Yahoo! Games provide multiplayer, multiplatform game functionality.

The Yahoo! Games Studio has developed games that are available on Verizon Wireless and will be available shortly on other major U.S. mobile carriers.

This is an interesting move, as back in 2002, Yahoo brought a stake in the mobile entertainment portal, Sonera Zed - only to sell it back last year.

"Casual games like dominoes and hearts are extremely popular in the emerging mobile entertainment market - they are just the right format for today's mobile devices and the broad range of users who like to play them," said Geoff Graber, general manager of Yahoo! Games. "As casual games continue to grow in popularity, our leadership in this area on the web allows us to readily extend our reach beyond the PC onto mobile phones."

Further enhancing the mobile experience for consumers, Yahoo! has acquired Stadeon, Inc., whose flagship product, Carousel, enables multiplayer cross-device connectivity. Through the integration of Stadeon's technology, Yahoo! Games' users, playing on their mobile devices, will be able to play against the hundreds of thousands of people who are online at any time of the day or night on the Yahoo! Games website to play a game, such as Chess, Poker, Literati, or another of the entertaining mobile games that Yahoo! makes available in the upcoming months."

Posted to the site on 7th March 2005