Yahoo calls for Ko’s US return

Singapore - As part of a business reorganisation, Yahoo Connected Life Asia VP and GM David Ko has been promoted to a position based in the US.

Singapore-based Ko, who has been runing the Yahoo Connected Life business across Asia, will return to the States as SVP for mobile, replacing Steve Bloom who left the company in August. In Ko's place Matthias Kunze, head of monetisation, will take on the VP and GM role.

The reorganisation introduces Connected Life v3.0 which will see Yahoo make both organisational and operational changes to build upon its mobile leadership in the coming years. It will be focusing on distribution leads, as well as its vision in Mobile-first monetisation and open strategy, with the aim to become a contributor to Yahoo!'s bottomline in 2009.

Ko will report to Marco Boerries, Yahoo’s EVP of the Connected Life Division. Boerries will now oversee all of the various groups, such as oneSearch, oneConnect and IPTV which were previously under Boom's care

In other Yahoo news, the Yahoo Mobile Developer Awards (YMDA) was launched today. This competition for tertiary students from six institutions, to build the best mobile widgets, is sponsored by DBS Bank, Kellogg Asia, Malaysia Airlines, and UEEEU.com in Singapore to build the best mobile widgets.

"Aligned with Yahoo!'s company-wide plan to re-wire itself and open up assets to third party publishers, developers and advertisers, this competition reinforces our commitment to open technologies and create opportunities for young developers to build the next generation of innovative content for mobile devices," Ko said.