Yahoo shelves RIM app in favor of iPhone
If you were looking for another reason to believe that Apple has a chance against the Blackberry in the smartphone race, you might want to know that Yahoo apparently believes that Apple will be the winner.
Yahoo apparently sent an email to programmers that had applied for a job to work on the Yahoo Mobile app for the Blackberry saying that, “Yahoo has decided to cease development” on the RIM platform app in order to concentrate on development on an app for the iPhone and on Browser-based app development. That’s pretty clear evidence that Yahoo feels that it would do better to be in the Apple camp.
Apparently, the Mobile app is the only project being changed. Other development for the RIM platform will continue. It has further been reported that this change involves the total reconfiguration of the Mobile application development team to concentrate on development of a custom app for the iPhone and a browser-based app for everyone else. The story was initially broken by TechCrunch, according to an AppleInsider article.
The email that was sent to prospective developers says, in part, “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.” Yeas, it’s hard to parse, but that’s what it says.
In part, this change may have been driven by the Yahoo Mobile app’s success in the Apple App Store. It ranks number 80 on the list of overall top downloads from the App Store, and is first in the News category. On the iPhone, the app features location-based searches, personalized news and sports, email access, an RSS reader, and tie-ins to social networking sites including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster, and others.
Regardless of which side you are on in the brewing iPhone vs. Blackberry battle, it must be admitted that this is a fairly significant development. When a player as large as Yahoo decides to forego the RIM platform in favor of the iPhone platform, one has to feel that they are feeling the winds of change in the smartphone marketplace, and that they feel the winds are blowing in favor of the iPhone.
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