• Reuters, Thursday, September 18, 2008 9:45 AM

Mobile search is on its way to becoming big business and could be worth as much as $2.4 billion in three years, according to Mobile Content Networks. MCN is a mobile search rival to Google and Yahoo; it earns money placing ads alongside mobile phone search results and screens. The mobile search firm believes the market will more than double each year as consumption of wireless data and mobile content accelerates through 2011.

"The mobile search business has started to move from an investment phase to the phase where it is a business on its own merits," MCN co-founder Kimmo Paaso tells Reuters. Of course, MCN faces stiff competition from the likes of Google and Yahoo in the mobile sphere. Whereas the Web giants have brought search, email, mapping and other services to phones, MCN is focused solely on search.

"I am not worried about them," Paaso said. "What they're offering is different and we complement each other." He points out that most searches done on mobile phones are not general Web searches, but rather specific searches for mobile content -- typically music tracks or games -- for which MCN charges content providers on a pay-per-click basis.

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