• May 25, 2010

Seeking to bolster their mobile offerings, Yahoo and Nokia have formed a strategic partnership in which the companies will collaborate on key services such as email, instant messaging and maps and navigation.

Under the alliance announced Monday, Yahoo will exclusively power email and chat in Nokia's Ovi suite of Internet services, while Nokia in return will integrate its Ovi maps application into Yahoo properties. The companies also plan to work on efforts to allow Nokia's Ovi users to use their Ovi account IDs to access Yahoo services more widely.

Co-branded mobile and PC-based offerings are expected to roll out by the second half of 2010 before becoming available worldwide in 2011.

In a press conference held at the Nasdaq headquarters in New York, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz and Nokia President and CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo emphasized that the companies would mutually benefit by combining their relative strengths in mail and messaging on one side and maps on the other. --Mark Walsh