Yahoo Ends BlackBerry App Support 1 April

Yahoo is to shut down nine more products as part of its ongoing restructuring programme, including its Yahoo BlackBerry application.

The app will no longer be available for download after 1 April, although existing users can continue to use it, so long as they are prepared to live without updates.

Yahoo Message Boards will also be discontinued, although message boards on services such as Yahoo Finance and Yahoo Fantasy Sports will remain operational.

Other services to get the chop are Yahoo Avatars, Yahoo Clues, Yahoo App Search and Yahoo Sports IQ, which also shut down on the same day, and Yahoo Updates API, which will be shut down on 16 April.

Yahoo BlackBerry app axed

“We’re constantly reviewing and iterating on our products and experiences. In some cases, it means updating our products like we’ve done recently with our new welcome to Yahoo, Flickr for iPhone and iPod Touch and Yahoo Mail.” said Jay Rossiter, executive vice president of platforms at Yahoo. “In other cases, after much thought and deliberation, we decide to shut down some products.”

“Ultimately, we’re making these changes in an effort to sharpen our focus,” he added. “By continuing to hone in on our core products and experiences, we’ll be able to make our existing products the very best they can be.”

The decision to axe the Yahoo BlackBerry application is interesting given that CEO Marissa Mayer has made mobile a key pillar of her strategy to revive the Internet giant. She recently said that there would be a focus on email and apps, while the new Yahoo homepage that was revealed last week is optimised for smartphones and tablets.

However she has also gone on record as saying that she wanted to reduce the company’s 60-70 mobile applications to around a dozen. Mayer assumed control of Yahoo last year and there are signs that it could be on the up after years of decline after the company posted its first revenue rise in four years.

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