If Yahoo can be successful in mobile without an OS, can it be profitable?
Marissa Mayer has a vision for Yahoo, and that vision is to make the company successful in the mobile space without having its own smartphone OS. The comments came during the company’s Q3 earnings call where Mayer announced revenues of $1.09 billion and earnings per share of $0.35.
Mayer said that not having its own mobile OS would work to the company’s advantage and allow the company to innovate across platforms. Mayer intends to leverage the strengths of the company in order to supply services, and more importantly content to users, specifically mentioning Yahoo’s stock ticker and weather services as well as seeming to point to Flickr and “sharing photos”.
One would wonder however, whether Yahoo will be able to draw revenue from mobile. There is no question that services like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pulse are successful in the mobile world, but success doesn’t necessarily mean profitability. Without a mobile OS and no one paying for a Yahoo app, Mayer must have some sort of trick to make it work. Maybe she can even lead the way and show Twitter and Facebook how to build a business and not just a successful product.
