Mobile Fridays 1/19/12

It’s time for Mobile Fridays where we update you with the latest news in the mobile space that has been released throughout the week!

Jerry Yang, Yahoo Co-Founder Abruptly Resigns

A little over two weeks ago, Yahoo announced Scott Thompson (former PayPal CEO) as their new CEO. Yahoo had more big news to come as co-founder Jerry Yang abruptly resigned Tuesday. Yang stated that his tenure at Yahoo “encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life.” The co-founder expressed before his departure that he was confident in the abilities of the entire Yahoo leadership team and was enthusiastic about the appointment of the new CEO. Yang has not fully explained why he is leaving Yahoo other than that he has desires to pursue other interests.

Sony Ericsson Posts Huge Loss

Late in October, Sony Corporation took over its mobile phone joint venture with Ericsson to completely own and rename the company – soon to be just Sony. As the company began to lose ground in the mobile phone manufacturing industry, Sony turned to Google’s Android OS in hopes of retaining their customers. Unfortunately, not even Android could save the dying Xperia line as it failed to compete and match sales with its rivals such as the Galaxy and Desire. To make matters worse, Sony recently announced that they had posted a pre-tax loss of 247 million euros for Q4 of 2011 bringing them down from the fourth/fifth largest OEM in the world to ninth. For the fourth quarter of 2011, the company also stated that they had only shipped 9 million units – down 20% from the previous year.

Zynga Quietly Acquires Four Mobile Game Developing Companies

According to Reuters, Zynga’s senior vice president David Ko confirmed the acquisition of four mobile game companies that the company quietly acquired in recent months. The four companies focus on developing games for smartphones and tablets which goes to show you where the focus for most developers will be in 2012. Zynga’s David Ko announced in an interview with Reuters that they had acquired German company Gamedoctors in December, San Francisco based company Page44 Studios in September, San Francisco based company HipLogic in August, and New York based company Astro Ape Studios in August. So why the acquisition of four companies? Well Zynga is currently dominating Facebook games and is attempting to now tackle the mobile industry with a mission to develop more games for mobile devices in order to take away market share from competitors such as EA and Gameloft.