At CTIA, the Yahoo! booth was constantly mobbed, thanks to the excellent & constant free ice cream (which was wonderful). Yahoo! was promoting their mobile client. I'm totally excited about this -- because it's the future. The day will come where wireless will simply be yet another IP pipe. Similar to the PC world, you and I will be free to choose our provider, what device or devices we want to use and more importantly what applications we want to use them with.
Good, bad or indifferent -- AT&T/Sprint/Verizon Wireless will simply be in the transport business and perhaps a bit of voice as well. They get all upset about this, but in fact, transport will be a very profitable business. It's not very exciting, but the guy with the best network will win and they don't need to worry or risk $$$ about which new app will make it or not.
The Yahoo! Mobile client is excellent in conception. #1 - they made it available for a variety of phones (so less boo-hoo), #2 - on my Blackberry, the client periodically goes out and gets new data, so it's always up to date, #3 - the GUI's not bad, it's colorful and fun. On the downside, the text is pretty small and the ability to fully customize is a bit limited. Nonetheless, I think this is clearly the future.
You might quickly imagine that over time Yahoo! includes a VoIP app as part of their client and they quickly become your information & voice supplier. While Yahoo! is trying to "play" nice with the various operators ("you guys are so smart"), it's not a long stone throw to see them using their direct consumer relationship and bypassing the operator.
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