I had the opportunity to attend CommunicAsia 2008 (my first time) last Tuesday, June 17 and had a great time going around Singapore Expo and checking the booths of various companies from different countries, all presenting the latest in the IT industry.  I went there after lunch and thought there wasn’t as many people as I expected.  Then again, maybe it was because Singapore Expo was so big.  According to reports, around 56,000 guests from all over the world attended this event.

There was a lot of mobile stuff that was presented and even Yahoo!’s focus here was on our mobile services.  The Yahoo! Mobile Team made several announcements during the event and demonstrated them to the visitors.  Here’s a rundown of what was announced:

Yahoo! oneSearch: Five new Yahoo! oneSearch partnerships with leading mobile operators in the Asia Pacific region. This brings the total number of mobile search deals signed by Yahoo! worldwide in the last 18 months to more than 60. New partnerships include: Smart Communications Inc., Digital Mobile Phlis, Inc. (SUN Cellular), Mahanagar Telephon Nigam Limited (MTNL, India), Hong Kong CSL Limited (CSL), and Vibo Telecom Inc. (Vibo, Taiwan).

Monetization: Mobile advertising partnerships with Idea Cellular Ltd. (India) and Maxis Communications Bhd (Malaysia). These two mobile operators plan to carry a variety of graphical advertisements sold and served by Yahoo!. These partnerships reinforce Yahoo!’s global mobile advertising leadership and build on similar advertising partnerships with AT&T, T-Mobile International and Vodafone UK.

Yahoo! Go 3.0: Localized versions of Yahoo!’s flagship mobile offering, Yahoo! Go 3.0, for India, Australia and Southeast Asia, including a local language version for Indonesia, and Yahoo! oneSearch with voice for English that recognizes regional accents for speakers in Singapore and India.

Mobile Widgets: New mobile widgets for the Asia Pacific region including Yahoo! Cricket, Yahoo! Answers, Showtimes (Yahoo! India Movies), and a MTV Asia mobile widget featuring news updates and music charts.

For more info, you can check out http://mobile.yahoo.com/newsroom.  Congrats to the Yahoo! Mobile Team for the really cool booth, no wonder it was overflowing with traffic during the event.  My first CommunicAsia will definitely not be my last.   For more photos of the event, check out Flickr.