1st European deal for MEDIO

Thomas Husson | September 10, 2007, 02:52 AM

As mentionned in this mobile search report a few weeks ago, US white-label search providers are trying to expand in Europe to offer mobile operators a customized search engine that will help them promoting their own storefront and avoid the GYM (Google-Yahoo Microsoft) domination.

Infospace was the first one to gain some traction with Virgin Mobile UK.

Today, MEDIO just announced its first major deal with T-Mobile International, providing the search engine box for T-zone, the wap deck. This is a good way to foster content discovery on an operator portal. One of the main competitive advantages of Medio is its reporting / analytical tools. In the long term, it should provide subscribers with more relevant answers and recommendations covering multiple content types.

T-mobile does not disclose any more the number of unique visitors to their own portal. Last metric shared was in February 2005 with 7.2M t-zones active users accross Europe, more than 2 years ago. The focus has since then been on the open-Internet offering. Google will thus remain the search engine provider for the Web'n'Walk offering.

Let's wait and see how JumpTap reacts to this and if they can also announce such a major deal.