Nokia and Yahoo announcing partnership Monday?
Whether you call it prescient omniscience or just dumb luck, The Onion's latest lampoon seems to have correctly predicted the Y!phone (pictured above). Or at least something close. We just received our invite to a Yahoo press event on Monday where CEO Carol Bartz will try to wow us with the following:
"An exciting announcement about providing global consumers with rich online and mobile experiences, and bringing forward a new era in keeping consumers connected."
Kara Swisher of All Things Digital says that the announcement involves building Yahoo apps and services, including email and search, into a range of Nokia devices. The partnership, dubbed "Project Nike" after the Greek goddess of victory, has apparently been in the works for years. A "Yahoo-centric phone" is not expected to be part of the announcement according to Swisher's sources. For Yahoo's part, partnering with the world's largest maker of cellphones is likely its best chance to compete in the mobile space against Google's booming Android OS. The benefit for Nokia in partnering with an also-ran is less clear though -- guess that's why this is a Yahoo press event and not a Nokia-sponsored one.
We asked Nokia the dealio but it refused to comment on "market speculation." Hey, we tried.
