Microsoft's favourite negotiating partner Yahoo revealed today it had signed some contracts with five mobile operators. Mahanagar Telephon Nigam Limited (India), Hong Kong CSL Limited, Smart Communications Inc. (Philippines), Digital Mobile Phlis, Inc. (SUN Cellular, Philippines) and Vibo Telecom Inc. (Taiwan) have opted to make Yahoo oneSearch the standard search engine on their mobile sites.

Yahoo, which will probably see a very tumultuous shareholder meeting on 1 August if Carl Icahn's proposals are backed, also claimed it has introduced its voice-based search service in Singapore and India, which, however, is limited to English and Blackberry handsets. The voice service can apparently learn accents and come to understand callers from various regions with different vowel movements. Discerning users have to sign up: http://m.yahoo.com/voice

Yahoo Go is also going to be regionalized for India, Australia and Southeast Asia. An Indonesian version of the mobile phone software is going to be introduced and new widgets are going to be made available, such as Yahoo Cricket and an MTV Asia widget. Users can check their emails, view maps, upload photos, add widgets and make mobile operators rich with Yahoo Go.

In addition to all those search shenanigans, Yahoo has also convinced Indian and Malaysian operators Idea Cellular and Maxis Communications to run ads on their mobiles, served by Yahoo and not by Google. Mobile phone customers are going to be unbelievably happy they pay phone bills only to get bombarded with advertising. X