Sitting comfortably on the top of the online corporate ladder and a market size which is three times larger than the Internet today, major search engines Google and Yahoo both plan to bring the internet to around 3.2 mobile phone users in comparison with the 850 million PC users at present.

Director of mobile platforms at Google, Andy Rubin remarked that the mobile phone market is three times the size of the market as the Web, so why not users turn first on the phone?

Moreover, Rubin stated that as advertisements play the major role in running Google’s business, enabling Internet-like experience in mobile phones is very essential to them. He added that Google’s latest phone platform ‘Android’ could possibly be the ultimate Internet-style-luminated cell phone, scheduled to be released later this year or by early 2009.

Android being an open-source platform for cell phones enables developers to build Internet-style applications on the phone. Rubin explained, continuing further that Google has collaborated with eight telecom firms globally, who are currently building Android-based phones.

Rubin also said that Google has financed US $10 million to challenge developers to build applications for Android, and interestingly there are now around 1700 developers in 75 nations that joined the competition, with 20 percent submissions flowing from Asia, which he expressed as a “pretty global effort and exciting to watch.”

Rubin, in an exclusive press briefing in Singapore, presented an unidentified cell phone that utilizes the Android platform, where it has Internet-style app attributes like BreadCrumbz, Enkin, Fon11, PedNav, multiple weather apps, as well as different pocket PC games, among others.

Managing Director and VP of Connected Life Yahoo! Asia Pacific, David Ko, revealed at the CommunicAsia event in June this year that mobile phones are now treated as the ‘starting point’ by Yahoo! in connecting with more product consumers in the Internet in comparison with PC users.

Ko said that the company is reinventing the mobile Internet and that it’s goal is to target billions of consumers in the online world. He further announced Yahoo’s new collaborations with Philippines-based Sun Cellular and Smart Communication Inc., the Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Ltd. (MTNL) in India, Hong Kong’s one2Free, and Taiwan’s Vibo Telecom Inc.

Moreover, he said that the development has escalated Yahoo’s mobile search agreements to more than 60 in the last 18 months, and claimed that with Yahoo! oneSearch’s release in the Philippines, it now stands the chance to reach 95 percent of the country’s cell phone users, which is above online desktop users.

Finally, Ko explained that Yahoo is a principal monetization engine for mobile Internet, allowing advertisers to connect with their target market at a huge scale and with impact, thereby offering consumers with enriched mobile experiences, and enabling publishers to monetize their services. He cited a study conducted by eMarket which estimated that the mobile advertising market will reach $16.2 billion in the year 2011.