In its first results announcement as CEO of Yahoo!, Marissa Mayer said the company needed to improve in research, mobility and hire the best people available in the area to develop its mobile strategy. While attending her first announcement of quarterly results from Yahoo! after having arrived as CEO in July, Mayer has said that there is a wide range of areas in which the company needs to improve.
“It was an active quarter, and solid, with some nice achievements,” said Mayer. Revenues are indeed $1.2 billion for the last quarter. Marissa Mayer said the company is encouraged by what she sees as a “stabilization” of the Web advertising and revenues related to research, but warned it would take “several years” for the company’s revenue to exceed the growth rate of the overall market.
Mobility at the heart of the strategy
The CEO also recalled the importance of enterprise mobility and emphasized the strong growth of mobile that Yahoo! needs to explore.
According to her, the positive results in this area are largely due to an overhaul of the Yahoo! mobile search page in 23 countries, as well as an updated Flickr application for Android devices. However, she said the company still had to multiply its efforts, in terms of mobility.
“I came to Yahoo! to grow and help redefine one of the Internet’s most beloved companies,” Mayer said during a conference call with investment analysts, adding that her top priority is developing “a focused, coherent mobile strategy.”
“At some point, at least half our technical workforce should be working on mobile,” Mayer said later about the Sunnyvale company’s 12,000 employees, “because Yahoo! should be a predominantly mobile company.”
Moreover, the range of mobile products business is too fragmented, with more than 76 different applications on iOS and Android. This implies a substantial strengthening of company personnel in the field of mobility.
Mayer added that there are more than a billion smartphone users worldwide, and two billion in the next three years, Yahoo! should take advantage of its strengths, even if “it will take several years.”
She also indicated a desire to find new partnerships with browsers, social networks and even mobile OS, while pursuing the company’s international expansion through local offices.
Yahoo! has difficult times behind it: Once it has been operating as a synonym for the Internet, but now it is facing tougher competition from new strong rivals, such as Google and Facebook. All in all, though, Mayer does have a sound strategy, but it will just take time to get results.