Yahoo Partners with Celltick to Create a Start Screen for its Users

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 5, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Celltick, a global leader in mobile initiated commerce, today announced its partnership with Yahoo to deliver greater value and a more engaging mobile experience to consumers via the start screen. The two companies have partnered to launch a Yahoo-branded Start for Android users.

Start is a next-generation Android interface, providing intelligent and dynamic functionality so users can get the most from their mobile phones. With Start, users get quick access to the most relevant features and information. The Start recommendation engine learns from user behavior and adapts the start screen to what users use most on their device. With Celltick LiveScreen, users are able to benefit from content, news, and promotions, irrespective of data plan or device.

Yahoo will be the default search provider for Start in Asia Pacific and India. Users will also have access to Yahoo products like Weather, Flickr, Yahoo news and other Yahoo media properties on their Start screens.

"We are excited to partner with Celltick to provide a personalized mobile experience for our users through a Yahoo version of Start," said Frank Chen, VP of Business Development APAC for Yahoo. "We are jointly working on increasing user engagement with Yahoo media assets on Android devices. Through the partnership we will be able to expand our reach to Celltick's 140 million LiveScreen feature phone users who are probably experiencing the Internet for the first time from their mobile devices. We are committed to keeping people connected to what matters most to them, across devices and around the world, and this partnership will help us to deliver on that promise."

Celltick's start screen technology benefits the entire mobile industry ecosystem, bringing value to media companies as well as handset manufacturers and mobile operators. As part of the relationship, Celltick will also promote Yahoo content and search as part of the Start default configuration to its operator and handset manufacturer relationships.

"For us, it was about developing an intelligent, engaging interface for users on the start screen," said Ronen Daniel, CEO of Celltick. "Across the board, the growing Celltick ecosystem enables higher user engagement by using themes, plug-ins, personalization features and ongoing updates based on intelligent analysis of user behavior, feedback and ongoing trends in the mobile arena. It's not just about content, it's about context. We are thrilled to partner with Yahoo, and plan to continue to work with partners like Yahoo in order to create new monetization opportunities while giving users the best in content, services and promotions."

With this partnership, Celltick continues to expand its reach beyond the core market community to close the loop between mobile marketing and the final transaction resulting from marketing promotions. In 2012, Celltick powered billions of mobile-initiated commerce transactions for virtual and physical goods serving more than 140 million active consumers across 25 countries.

About Yahoo
Yahoo is focused on making the world's daily habits inspiring and entertaining. By creating highly personalized experiences for our users, we keep people connected to what matters most to them, across devices and around the world. In turn, we create value for advertisers by connecting them with the audiences that build their businesses. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., and has offices located throughout the Americas, Asia Pacific (APAC) and the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) regions. For more information, visit the pressroom (pressroom.yahoo.net) or the company's blog (yahoo.tumblr.com).

About Celltick
Celltick is a global leader in mobile initiated commerce. Celltick's Start is a next generation personalized intelligent interface for Android devices. Celltick is unique in creating and managing mass market mobile marketing solutions for mobile operators, large media companies, device manufacturers and large brands. Celltick enables its partners to engage and monetize their users on the mobile. The company drives billions of transactions annually across more than 140 million active consumers across its different mobile platforms in over 25 countries. A rapidly growing company, Celltick has subsidiaries in Europe, Asia, South America and the U.S.  For more information, visit www.celltick.com.

SOURCE Celltick