The Telefonica-Yahoo relationship actually goes back a couple of years, since in late 2007, Telefonica made Yahoo oneSearch the main search service on 15 other mobile portals.  This is just a big step forward in terms of people affected and money at stake.

Scott Ellison, IDC’s Vice President of Mobile and Wireless, explained in a statement, "The expansion of Yahoo!’s mobile search partnership with Telefonica into Spain continues to demonstrate Yahoo!’s ability to provide highly personalized and localized mobile search experiences and further establishes its position as a leading mobile customer experience provider.  Building a significant European market presence is essential toward executing a successful mobile strategy."

Strengthening its relationship with Telefonica might be essential to keeping Yahoo out of court, too.  Telefonica’s CEO has expressed an interest in getting money from Google – "search engines use our network, without paying anything for it," he said about a month ago – but the expansion of this partnership increases the odds that he’ll leave Yahoo alone.

Unfortunately, the terms of this deal haven’t been disclosed.

"Yahoo! oneSearch revolutionized the mobile search experience, by delivering relevant answers to queries that mobile users have while on-the-go. More than 70 leading mobile operators around the world selected Yahoo! to power the mobile search experiences, providing us with an enormous opportunity to connect mobile consumers," says David Ko, senior vice president, Connected Life, Yahoo Inc.

It’s interesting to note the deals that T-Mobile has with different search providers. Dan Frommer at Silicon Alley Insider writes:

Here’s a backhanded compliment: T-Mobile told the WSJ that Yahoo is specifically best suited for its lower-end phones. If you recall, Google (GOOG) partnered with T-Mobile to launch its first phone, the geeky G1, last month.

This is a fine deal for Yahoo, but it makes the assumption that people will use the search engine they’re forced upon, versus choosing the one they like the best.

Yahoo will also deliver mobile sponsored search results and in some cases display advertising within the search results presented through web2go. Earlier in the year, Yahoo announced a partnership with T-Mobile to provide mobile search and advertising for T-Mobile International across ten European countries.

oneSearch is Yahoo’s mobile search service, and version 2.0 was launched earlier today.  It brings improvements like predictive text completion and contextual recommendations.  Voice input options should also speed up the mobile search process, and "richer information" (like transit schedules or the number of reservations available at a restaurant) is in the works.

 Marco Boerries Stands Behind oneSearch 2.0

For the time being, some of this technology is only available to iPhone owners.  Other features are restricted to the BlackBerry crowd.  But an official release states, "Over the coming months, the product is expected to support additional devices and become available internationally," so not much patience should be necessary.

Yahoo managed to establish 29 partnerships with the original oneSearch, and the company boasts of reaching 600 million consumers.  That it’s able to kick off version 2.0′s release with what looks like Apple’s and RIM’s involvement speaks to the service’s influence, and the cooperation of other companies can be expected.

Yahoo appears to be getting a leg up on Google with this move; Marco Boerries, the executive vice president of Yahoo Connected Life claims, "With Yahoo! oneSearch 2.0, we are fundamentally changing the way consumers use the Internet on their mobile phones."

This seemingly special accomplishment isn’t too unusual; we’ve seen oneSearch expand by leaps and bounds before.  Still, the development took place in an area that greatly interests many American companies – the Asia Pacific region – and will bring Yahoo up to a noteworthy level of market penetration.

Marco Boerries, the company’s top mobile executive, put the figure at “roughly 40 percent coverage of all subscribers in those countries” in an interview with Eric Auchard.  (“Those countries” include India, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.)  Boerries also indicated that Yahoo doesn’t plan to stop there, adding, “We have a clear goal to lead the market.  The goal is to exceed 50 percent.”

It’s hard to see why this wouldn’t be achievable, given the lack of competition from another giant like Google or Microsoft.  Yahoo will still have to challenge local services, of course, but its oneSearch monetization and revenue-sharing plans seem to have caught carriers’ eyes.

Reuters said Yahoo’s Marco Boerries thinks Google is being distracted by technology instead of focusing on the advertising that provides virtually all of their revenue.

Meanwhile, Yahoo has been able to close deals with several hardware makers to place its oneSearch product on handsets. They signed up Telefonica and its 100 million-plus subscribers, a big win for oneSearch.

Yahoo received praise for its strategy from RBC Capital Markets analyst Jordan Rohan, who suggested to Reuters the strategy of focusing on distribution deals looks like the right approach.

In contrast, Boerries believes Google could run into issues when negotiating revenue sharing with carriers who may end up with a Google-powered phone in their lineups.

That point falls in with our line of thinking about Google, and the way its mobile product can matter if Google runs the network, something they seem to have the resources to accomplish. Right now, Yahoo has some momentum on the mobile side, even if it isn’t accompanied by the same hype as Google’s work.

Aside from the five seemingly random numbers (58242), the service should be quite easy to use.  Just send an SMS containing a city’s name to that short code, and oneSearch SMS will give you a weather report.  Type out a company’s name, and you’ll get stock info.  There should also be ways to obtain addresses, phone numbers, and news stories.

Furthermore, there is no shortage of communications companies that have embraced the service.  “oneSearch SMS is available through all major operators including Airtel, Reliance Mobile, Vodafone, Idea Cellular, BPL Mobile, Aircel, Tata Indicom, and Spice Telecom,” according to Yahoo India.

It remains to be seen if this move will give Yahoo India all the attention and market share it thinks it deserves.  Nonetheless, the existence of oneSearch SMS shouldn’t hurt the company, and in a market that’s as competitive as India, every advantage is an important one.

Note the use of present tense throughout most of the previous paragraph – these changes are taking place today, so results may be a little spotty at the moment.  It won’t be long before oneSearch users have a lot more information at their fingertips, however.

David Dalka is pleased to see the flight info, writing, “Assuming the airline data is accurate at the time of the query this is an example of a highly useful mobile query.”  He then gives an example: “A query of UA 90 shows a canceled flight today.”  Nifty.

And how about Yahoo Answers?  It’s not my favorite thing in the world, but TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld notes, “One of Yahoo’s most successful product launches in recent years has been Yahoo Answers, which is showing more than 50 percent year-over-year growth in pageviews . . .”  So there are liable to be a lot of people happy about having convenient mobile access.

As for Wikipedia . . .  Wikipedia is actually one of my favorite resources.  Before quoting anything, I double-check elsewhere, of course, but as someone who rarely uses his cell phone for anything other than phone calls, I consider its integration with oneSearch a real draw.

If others feel the same way, Yahoo may wind up with a highly successful product on its hands.  oneSearch is a young product – it only debuted in January – but it’s already available in well over a dozen countries, and appears to be one of Yahoo’s brightest prospects.

More than 100 million Telefonica subscribers, representing 15 countries in Europe and Latin America, will soon find their mobile Web experience infinitely more efficient and rewarding.

That’s a nice, healthy chunk of the global population that will see Yahoo oneSearch on its mobiles every time they use it to look for weather, news, and other information. They will also be able to use Yahoo Mail and the Flickr photo sharing service through the service.

Boom did leave out one little detail about the deal. OneSearch delivers advertising to the screen. Maybe he thought it would be unseemly to mention this revenue aspect of the Telefonica arrangement, but picking up a hundred million mobile users in one deal is the kind of win Yahoo needs to tout.

The deal revolves around Yahoo oneSearch, which has a habit of undergoing huge growth spurts.  This new development won’t disappoint; oneSearch product should be made “the main search service on Telefonica’s mobile portals in 15 countries in Europe and Latin America, potentially reaching more than 100 million consumers worldwide,” according to a press release.

That’s impressive.  And Steve Boom, the senior vice president of Yahoo’s broadband and mobile division, later revealed in a Yodel Anecdotal blog post, “As of today, oneSearch is the priority search service for over 200 million mobile consumers through seven major mobile operators in nearly 30 countries across Europe, Asia, and the Americas.  Our ultimate goal is to connect one billion mobile users worldwide, so you can count on more to come.”

In the meantime, Yahoo’s sitting pretty.  Telefonica also seems pleased about whatever benefits oneSearch may bring to its users.  There appears to be a bit of an imbalance in the relationship, though, so we should note that the deal’s financial details were not disclosed.  It also remains unclear how long the deal may last.

Finally, there’s no telling if Telefonica could draw Yahoo into F1.  But if oneSearch continues to spread so quickly, it’s almost inevitable that the two will meet at some point.

To explain Novarra’s appeal, its CEO, Jayanthi Rangarajan issued a statement.  And while Rangarajan’s comments actually correspond to a deal from earlier this month – Yahoo chose Novarra to work with oneSearch – that detail only serves to reinforce the company’s popularity and success.

“We leverage our deep expertise of mobile networks and handsets and offer robust, scalable platforms,” said Rangarajan in a press release.  “Our mass-market deployments across America, Europe and Asia have proven consumer satisfaction and steady growth.”

Some people, including peHub’s Dan Primack, are even comparing Novarra’s work to that of a much more famous corporation.  “Just like Apple, Novarra is focused on enabling Web accessibility on mobile phones,” writes Primack.

“Unlike Apple, Novarra is not making its own handset – instead offering to convert the Web in a way that works with existing mobile phones,” he then continues.  “[It] is a definite improvement over traditional mobile Web apps that have been allergic to such things as rich text.”

Hat tip to alarm:clock.