Yahoo! has partnered with Vlingo, a speech recognition company to help them use a voice search function for the second version of its mobile search engine oneSearch. “This is really a sea change. This is not about simple Web links any more,” said Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoo’s Connected Life unit.

Yahoo! has said this is an effort to make a faster and quick mobile search service available for their users. Yahoo! is also activating the search assist feature (which helps users in inputting text) and using “semantic web” to get a more open mobile search through integrated search results. What Yahoo! is aiming at is delivering the most accurate and relevant search in mobile phones rather than the usual search to its users.

To reach a potential 600 million phone user base with mobile Internet services, Yahoo! has teamed up with dozens of operators around the world. Yahoo! says it is coming up with deals to reach it target of 750 million users.

In its attempt to make the search process faster, Yahoo! has also got oneSearch to the mobile phone’s idle screen. This way the user doesn’t have to open the phone’s web browser but can directly and quickly access oneSearch. But Yahoo! will have to wait and see whether mobile manufacturers decide on integrating this in the default menu of their mobile phones
Seems like Yahoo! sees the future in mobile and this may turn out to be a fruitful move.