Yahoo is playing catch up to Silicon Valley rivals Google and Facebook with the announcement of the first ever Yahoo Mobile Developer Conference to be held on Feb. 19, 2015.
Announcing the news in a blog post on Monday, Yahoo says it is targeting mobile developers to help them create profitable mobile apps using mobile analytics tools provided by Flurry, a digital startup acquired by Yahoo for around $300 million.
"I'm thrilled to announce The Yahoo Mobile Developer Conference will take place February 19th, 2015 in San Francisco!" says Flurry's Jarah Euston. "Join us as we announce a suite of tools that will help mobile developers better understand their users and improve, grow and monetize their apps."
Few details about Yahoo's developer conference were shared. However, Euston says Flurry vice president of products Simon Khalifa will lead the speaker lineup to deliver a State of Mobile address. The conference will also include breakout sessions that will help developers solve issues that currently break the mobile app market.
Developers interested in attending can sign up to receive additional details about the event. Unlike Google's I/O developer conference, which charges participants $900 to attend, attendants at the Yahoo developer conference will be able to attend for free. However, only 900 developers will be invited.
Although Yahoo has been late to the developer game, with Facebook first courting developers in 2007 and Google following with its own conference in 2008, the Sunnyvale Internet company is doing all the right things.
"They are moving in the right direction," says analyst Victor Anthony at Topeka Capital Markets. "No one has won the mobile game. It's still an open opportunity."
A study published last month by Flurry shows Americans are spending more time in front of their mobile screens instead of the television. The study, which looks at screen time for the last nine months, shows the time spent in front of mobile devices rose by 9.3 percent to two hours and 57 minutes. Meanwhile, Americans on average spend two hours and 48 minutes in front of the TV.
However, when former key Google executive Marissa Mayer joined Yahoo as its new CEO in 2012, she was reportedly surprised to find out that the 20-year-old company only had a little more than one-third of its 12,000 employees working on mobile.
During the two years she has been at Yahoo's helm, Mayer led the acquisition of more than 40 companies, most of them with deep roots in mobile, and it seems her efforts are paying off. In Yahoo's third-quarter fiscal results, the company announced a 17 percent growth of its mobile user, with 550 million people using Yahoo's mobile apps, and more than $200 million in mobile revenue.
