Looks like Yahoo is determined to get back on track as the company launched Yahoo Mobile Development Suite to court mobile app developers.
Globally known for its Web Portal, Yahoo hosted its first developer conference (YMDC) earlier this week. Yahoo showed off various applications and services to woo app developers.
According to ChinaTopix, many of the features come from Yahoo's acquisition of the mobile analytics firm, Flurry.
Flurry offers analytics on how users move around a mobile app, offering detailed insights for more retention. Yahoo Mobile Development Suite unifies Yahoo App Publishing for monetization, Search In App, and App Marketing with its Flurry Analytics acquisition made in 2014.
According to TechCrunch, this is Yahoo's "ads in dev's clothing" strategy to convince app makers to buy and host its ads.
According to a Yahoo spokesperson, "Designed to help developers understand, measure, advertise, monetize, and enhance their apps. The suite includes five new products, Flurry Analytics Explorer, Yahoo App Publishing, Yahoo App Marketing, Yahoo Search in Apps, and Flurry Pulse."
Currently Flurry has 200,000 app developers on its platform who have built 630,000 apps that reached 1.6 billion devices. Meanwhile, Yahoo has 575 million monthly visitors to its properties and hit $1.2 billion in mobile revenue in 2014, as it predicted; however, QZ.com points out that the company's focus right now is on attracting app developers to build on its platform.
Marissa Mayer, a former Google executive, who serves as CEO and President of Yahoo, is banking on mobile to turn the company around. Since she joined, Yahoo has ramped up its mobile team from 50 to 500 people and refreshed many of its apps such as Weather, Sports and Games in order to rave reviews.
Mayer says, right now it's about building innovative, game-changing applications. She further adds that Yahoo is providing developers the tools for them to grow and earn money on their own apps.
Without its 15 percent stake in Alibaba and Yahoo Japan, Yahoo is still running on a $400 million operating loss. Yahoo chief executive Mayer needs to continue investing in new markets and also remove some of the poor performers, Chinatopix reported. Mayer is confident that Yahoo is finally catching up in mobile, cited by the same report.
