Yahoo! says bye-bye to Java smartphone app

Yahoo! has ceased development of its Java smartphone app.

It recently released a message to beta testers explaining the company "has decided to cease development of the Yahoo! Mobile smartphone app effective Wednesday, May 20th. So you will not be provided access to the beta program for this product."

Things were looking promising for Yahoo!'s mobile repositioning. By 1 April, Yahoo! had a redesigned mobile website, a richer but similarly featured iPhone app, and plans for a Java phone edition. However, that final Java app is no longer going to materialise, at least not in its originally planned form.

Yahoo! cites streamlined services as the impetus for discontinuing development on the mobile app.

Yahoo! Mobile on the web and iPhone groups Yahoo!'s search, RSS, and social-networking products together in a unified app, after each had been released as a separate element months before. It's a successful design, where the features are organised by screens in the iPhone app and by subsections on the scrolling web app.

In contrast, the Java setup imagined the application as a gathering place for widgets: weather, email, social networks, news feeds, and a browser shortcut.

Yahoo! said its mobile team will continue developing for multiple mobile platforms, so it's likely this won't be the last we hear of a native Yahoo! Mobile application for a platform other than the iPhone - especially with platform-specific app stores on the rise.

Original article: Yahoo drops its smartphone app from CNET News.com