Marissa Meyer, CEO of Yahoo, has announced the company intends to rely on growth opportunities offered by the booming smartphone market to turn itself around. Meyer, who became the sixth CEO of Yahoo in the last five years, shared some of her insights at the Fortune’s Most Powerful Women dinner in New York a week ago and insisted that the company will reverse its misfortunes by capitalizing on the fast-expanding smartphone industry.
Yahoo has seen an overall decline in its traditional internet businesses and as a result has allowed its primary competitor Google to build a substantial lead. In addition, widely popular online social networks like Facebook and Twitter have also gotten the jump on Yahoo, increasing the competition significantly. Meyer has confirmed that Yahoo has concrete plans to reverse the decline by providing a wider assortment of products for users as well as providing users with product information, accessories and content for their smartphones.
According to Meyer, consumers tend to use their phones to check the weather, stock quotes, news, play games, check email, and instant message their friends – facilities and applications Yahoo has already rolled out. While still fairly tentative, Yahoo plans on extensively marketing content and information for at least two major mobile platforms, Android and iOS. According to Yahoo, smartphone users will be able to access Yahoo services through their smartphones and obtain all their information from one source, greatly simplifying their content requirements.
Meyer has also hinted in an interview with Fortune’s Patricia Sellers that with the mobilization of Yahoo services, there were plans of building its own mobile platform which marks Yahoo’s first entry into the competitive smartphone industry as well as a new all-in-one application which has intrigued many. This all-in-one app offers various Yahoo services like Yahoo Mail, Search, News, Finance, Flickr, Groups, Answers and many more.
An all-in-one app entails a greater deal of work than people give it credit for, emphasizing Marissa Meyer’s ambitious streak and deterministic vision. Meyer was appointed as CEO while she was six months pregnant and has since improved Yahoo’s profitability substantially with her innovativeness and drive. She gave birth to her son a bit more than a month ago and announced her return to work almost a fortnight later, further underlining her determination to advance Yahoo and regain its dominance in the market. With Meyer leading the way, many are curious to see if Yahoo makes a grand comeback or settles into obscurity.
