Yell has launched a new mobile application and mobile internet site, in an effort to ramp up its presence on mobile in the face of competition from the likes of Google and Yahoo.
The application provides full access to Yell's listings, while also keeping track of regular requests, providing an auto-suggest function, and letting users 'click to call' businesses. It also provides zoomable maps, and lets users save info to their Contacts, or send it to friends via SMS.
This afternoon, Yell held an online webchat to give more info on the new service. "This is our first serious push into mobile," said Martin Wilson, head of mobile marketing at Yell.com.
"With over 12 million users of the mobile web, it is an interesting opportunity. The aim is to hit 70% of the UK market with the application, while browse is our catch-all offering."
This isn't Yell's first move into mobile - the company launched its first WAP site in 2001, before introducing a text messaging service in 2003, and an application in 2004. However, Wilson says the new app has a bunch of new features, including Click To Call, Auto Suggest, and maps and directions.
There's also a feature that lets you share the application with friends, which the company says is a way of getting around the difficulty of educating mobile users about applications and services that are available off-portal. Flat-rate data tariffs will also be important.
"I think that flat-rate will take off like a rocket, and that the operators will have to all offer a flat-rate structure," says Carey Bunks, senior VP of business development at Yell.com.
"When this happens, it is really going to drive what happens in this space, because first, people are going to want to use it, and then just after, I'm guessing that we'll have an introduction of many new services. That's to say we'll have a paradigm shift similar to what happened with ADSL in the late 90s."
Yell has some interesting views behind why the time is write to make a big push with a mobile application. According to Bunks, the fact that the mobile Web is going to be "much bigger" than the PC web is a key driving factor.
"The stats we have [indicate] that there are 12 to 15 million regular mobile Internet users in the UK, and that about 95% of all UK phones are mobile Internet enabled," he says. Really? That sounds extremely high, although he went on to clarify that a.) the figure came from Forrester, and b.) it might relate merely to the percentage of phones that have a data contract.
"That explains why it is only 12-15 million regular mobile Internet users, and not 55 million," he says. "As contracts go flat-rate, I believe that some of the operational details will be ironed out. Remember how it was with setting up ADSL? In the beginning it could be quite painful to get the modem to work and all the networking details. But now it is pretty straightforward."
How many of those 12-15 million people actually go off-portal though, rather than just surf Vodafone Live or Orange World, for example? Wilson says that 70% go off-portal, and thinks this will grow as the mobile operators follow their ISP cousins and realise they can't try to control content.
"The services are often not best in breed," he says, which may raise the odd eyebrow from Yell's operator partners. "We have relations with several operators today, and we see them as marketing partners moving forward. We all need to work together ultimately. Their business is networks!"
Bunks chips in. "Also, the operators cannot offer a free service the way Yell can. They are really much more oriented to a transaction-based service... After having worked the last few years delivering apps to mobile operators, my opinion is that they don't yet understand how to integrate the problems of network operations with application development, content provisioning and so on."
How about other competition though? Google and Yahoo are both piling into mobile with a combination of search (including local search), mapping and so on. Surely they'll present stiff opposition for Yell's new application? Wilson says in the UK, Yell's local knowledge will be its key weapon against this competition.
"We have two million listings across the UK, and we know local very well," he says. "Compare services. Try finding a bar in Soho with Google or Yahoo. Our focus is on giving a user all the information. They can then compare and action."
Meanwhile, Bunks points out that Yell has a lot of people on the ground collecting local data in face-to-face meetings with businesses, which he says rivals will struggle to match.
During the chat, Yell was also asked about whether its mobile offering will in future be integrated with GPS-enabled phones and devices, so that users don't have to enter their postcode or exact area, and to also get specific directions. The answer: it's on the cards, at some point.
"GPS is definitely on our roadmap," says Bunks. "We are just waiting for some small conditions. When GPS is integrated into the handset, it will help. This is just around the corner, so they say, and also there are going to be some network location services such as UTDOA - Uplink Time Difference of Arrival - and maybe other stuff too like Wi-Fi location services."
Bunks does point out that there are still issues with GPS, such as it not working everywhere even when you're outside, if a building's in the way.
Finally, advertising cropped up as a topic for discussion, mainly in terms of what role it'll play in Yell's mobile activities going forward. Wilson says it will add value to users and help them compare, and in essence the app will work like the physical Yellow Pages, which is free, and funded by advertisers rather than consumers.
Is there an issue about presenting ads on a mobile application like Yell's, given the screen restrictions? "It depends how you present them," says Wilson, before Bunks takes up the baton. "Sure, we have to innovate in the advertising space, but finding the right type of ads is important, because we want to maintain very high usability."
Download the new Yell Mobile application via this link.