Yahoo Clinches Another Partner In Wireless Deal

By Joseph Palenchar On Jul 23 2001 - 6:00am

Yahoo! teamed up with Timex to expand its wireless presence.

Yahoo! currently partners with wireless carriers Motient, Sprint PCS and Verizon.

The latest deal makes Yahoo! the default provider of information feeds to Timex's Internet Messenger watch-pager, a one-way word pager available since May at around $99. In addition, the watch boxes are co-branded with the words "Timex Internet Messenger, Fortified with Yahoo!"

The watches are available in three styles at Timex retailers, including Sears, Service Merchandise, Target, Timex Stores and Walmart. It can also be purchased at www.timex.com.

The Yahoo service delivers stock quotes, news, weather, sports scores, flight information and other information. As with most pagers, subscribers can also program their enterprise, POP3, and IMAP4 e-mail accounts to forward e-mail automatically to the watch, and they can program other Web services to send information alerts to the watch.

The Motorola-made watch operates on the SkyTel network. Among the several rate plans available, SkyTel offers 500 messages up to 100 characters each for only $9.99 per month.

In Yahoo's partnership with wireless-data carrier Motient, Motient markets eLink service Fortified With Yahoo! to wireless two-way handhelds made by Research In Motion. Motient pushes Yahoo e-mail and personalized content to subscriber devices, which also deliver access to Yahoo instant messaging (IM). Users who make changes to the device's calendar and contact list automatically synchronize the changes with a personal calendar and contact list residing on Yahoo's servers.

Yahoo's e-mail and information services also appear on Verizon and Sprint PCS phone menus for easy access, making it unnecessary for users to manually bookmark Yahoo's site on their phone.

Yahoo IM service is also available on select wireless devices.