Yahoo's Mayer speaks mobile at company's first Mobile Developer Conference

In San Francisco on Thursday, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer hosted the company's first ever Mobile Developer Conference. Yahoo has made a push into mobile at the right time. Mayer said at the event that mobile originally started as a hobby inside the company, but now accounts for 25% of revenue. Of the 1 billion viewers claimed by Yahoo, 575 million are using a mobile device when connecting with a Yahoo site.

The mobile economy amounts to $3.3 trillion a year. If it were a country, it would have the fifth largest GDP in the world. Yahoo itself brought in mobile-related revenue of $1.2 billion in 2014. That would place it number three in its business category. During Mayer's reign at Yahoo, the number of mobile developers inside the company has grown from 50 to the current number of 500.

At the mobile conference, Mayer also introduced Yahoo's new mobile developer suite that includes a number of analytical, marketing and advertising tools designed to help developers get more business from their apps. This is where Yahoo's acquisition of Flurry last year comes into play.

While more than 1000 developers attended the conference, not everyone considers Yahoo's mobile push to be a total success. According to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, "Yahoo has had a lot of progress, but they still lag the industry in terms of mobile adoption and mobile revenue. They’re at about half of where they probably should be."

source: BusinessWire via USAToday