Start-ups increasingly fragment mobile search market

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Mobile Industry & Technology Journalist - freelance

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Start-ups increasingly fragment mobile search market

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 26 February, 2009

Google is the most used mobile search engine, but its crown is being threatened by the increasing tendency of operators and content providers to use rival offerings as their default engines. Microsoft recently snatched this position at Verizon from Google, while Yahoo has secured a wide range of partnerships, and now smaller challengers are scoring valuable contracts at the leader's expense too.

So Fox Mobile has signed up MCN, while human powered engine ChaCha has search-based mobile advertising agreements withPalm, McDonalds and others, and has entered the US top 10 for most used message-based services.

ChaCha's product is free and it makes its money from a 'pay for performance' mobile ad platform, based on SMS technology. According to Nielsen, ChaCha is now number seven in US SMS-based services, achieving search volume that is almost three-quarters that of Google and 3.5m unique mobile users in its first year. Its main differentiator is a free mobile answers service that works similarly to directory enquiries allows any question to be asked by text. Such added value offerings are proving very popular with under-25s and are helping many independent search companies to achieve uptake that comes close to Google's.

Another in this category, MCN (Mobile Content Networks) has signed with Fox Mobile's Jamba and Jamster content sites to deploy the MCN allwords vertical paid search program. MCN currently has more than 30 operator and portal partners reaching 300m mobile users worldwide and supports a vertical search merchandising program for content providers. MCN will initially launch with carriers in Thailand and Sweden with plans to expand to other international regions.