Vodafone, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia and Cingular seem about to go into the search engine business.

They may start up their own system not to tailor a better service for their uses, but because the, "network operators are determined to secure a large slice of the lucrative search advertising market." says The Telegraph.

"A joint approach is essential, because mobile networks will need to offer advertisers a large audience if they are to challenge the US search giants," says the story. The UK Big Four, Orange, owned by France Telecom, O2, part of Spain's Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile and Vodafone, will be at 3GSM in Barcelona next week.

"One option would be to ask an existing search engine, possibly Google or Yahoo!, to power a service for all the networks," says Guardian Unlimited quoting an unnamed operator as saying, "The larger operators would need to be on board for it to be viable because that would make it a de facto standard, then you also have the benefit of economies of scale."

Bigger networks such as Vodafone already have dealss with the likes of Yahoo! and Google, but a collective arrangement would be particularly attractive to smaller networks keen to get their slice of the mobile advertising market as it starts to grow, says the story, adding:

"Throughout the mobile phone industry, companies are exploring new ways to lock in users and create new revenue streams as tough competition drives down call charges."

And, the mobile Net will be given a further boost at Barcelona when LG Electronics is announced as the winner of a competition to produce an affordable, mass-market handset capable of accessing the web," says The Telkegraph.

"Twelve of the leading mobile operators spanning six continents and more than 620m subscribers have agreed to sell the 3G (third generation) phone to their customers. This will allow economies of scale sufficient to bring its price in well below existing 3G handsets. The deal will also be a massive boost for LG, allowing it to challenge the dominance of the four largest handset makers: Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Siemens and Motorola."

Will Google and Yahoo now launch their own custom branded mobiles to beat off the upstarts?

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Also See:
The Telegraph - Mobile giants plot secret rival to Google, February 5, 2007
Guardian Unlimited - Mobile phone firms seek their own search engine, February 1, 2007