European mobile firms working on a plan to take on Google, Yahoo!

Europe’s biggest telecoms groups are planning to meet together to work on a project to create a mobile phone search engine.

The aim is to create a rival technology to search engine industry giant Google and Yahoo! the companies involved in the project include Vodafone, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia and Cingular.

These companies are due to come together for secret, high-level talks in Barcelona next week.

These mobile companies have a good reason to do so. The mobile telephony charges are dropping fast leading to decreasing revenues for these companies. And if they have to collaborate with Google and Yahoo!, they would be left with shared revenues from add-on services.

The mobile industry believes it can retain a greater share of advertising revenues by developing its own service. This would also enhance their position against the global internet leaders.